The trial of journalists
Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi Tuesday in the Vatican
for their books about the Holy See, "Avarice" and "The Way of
the Cross," is a trial against freedom of the press as well as
the two reporters, the pair have said.
Together with the two accused of divulging Holy See
confidential documents also being tried are alleged
whistleblowers, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and
Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, as well as Vallejo's former
assistant Nicola Maio, all of them also accused of criminal
association for having taken documents from the Vatican's
financial affairs committee and passing them to the two
reporters.
Nuzzi and Fittipaldi, who under Vatican law face potential
sentences of four to eight years in prison if found guilty,
indicated they would be present in court but both strongly
protest the trial of journalists merely for doing their job and
threatening thereby the freedom of information.
"What is opening is not a trial against me but a trial
against freedom of the press," Fittipaldi wrote in a letter to
la Repubblica.
"Vatican jurisprudence considers the very essence of our
profession to be a crime, that is to say the duty to publish
facts that authorities, in whatever form they take, want to keep
hidden from the public".
Regarding the accusation of having put at risk "vital
interests of the Holy See," he asked "did the stories on the
Vatican real estate wealth or the necessary costs for relatives
and religious orders to canonize their candidate really threaten
the national security of the Vatican? I doubt it".
Faced with the revelations in his book "in the end they
preferred to criminalise not the merchants in the temple but
those who smashed them." he said.
The journalist from l'Espresso magazine underlines that in
the Vatican "there is no law comparable to article 21 of our
Constitution, no defence of the right of reporting, or
professional code that allows journalists to apply professional
secrecy to protect their sources".
Nuzzi for his part, writing on Twitter and Facebook under
the hashtag #noinquisizione, launched a campaign of against
gagging information.
"You can't put people on trial for giving information. The
politicians are silent, the Order of Journalists too," he
tweeted.
"At the trial nobody is charged with theft. The true theft
is in the Vatican, as reported in the book, but nobody must talk
about that".
"The Vatican court forbids lawyers to give the defendants
copies of the court documents, we can only look at them. Shame!"
Supporters of the two reporters have been active on social
networks with readers posting photos of themselves with their
books in their hands.
In Vienna the OSCE, through its representative for media
Dunja Mijatovic, asked the Vatican authorities to withdraw the
criminal charges against the two journalists.
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