Sardinian bishop indicted with Becciu's brother for embezzlement

'These are days of trial'

An Italian court has handed down indictments for both the Bishop of Ozieri and the brother of Cardinal Angelo Becciu on charges of embezzlement and money laundering.

Bishop Corrado Melis of the Diocese of Ozieri.

Prosecutors in Sardinia asked a court in January to indicate Bishop Corrado Melis and Antonio “Tonino” Becciu, along with several other local defendants, on charges they illegally siphoned off “8 per mille” funds — money from the system by which Italians taxpayers can allocate .8% of their annual income tax return to a recognized religious body or state run social assistance program.

A Sardinian magistrate on Monday formally indicted the defendants in a preliminary hearing in the island province’s capital, Sassari, and set a trial date for April.

Bishop Melis called the charges “one of the most painful and delicate pages in the history of our diocesan Church.”

“These are days of trial, of questions, of pain for those who love this community and have dedicated their lives to it,” the bishop said in a letter to local Catholics. “As with Jesus, my prayer does not doubt God’s love,” the bishop wrote. “On that night of Gethsemane, indeed, in the great solitude of that night, the only certain thing about Jesus is the love of the Father: ‘Father, if this cup cannot pass from me without my drinking, your will be done.’”

Insisting on the “strangeness” of the charges, Melis said Jan. 3 that “as a citizen and a man of faith, I cannot keep quiet about the pain of injustice, made even stronger by the perception that in the world of the courts, investigations and trials (environments completely unknown to me) there is someone who has the power to make life impossible.”

“This attitude is a cause of great bitterness for my life and many others involved,” the bishop said, without explaining who supposedly had such power and might be unjustly using it against him.

Bishop Melis has been in recent years an outspoken advocate for the diocese’s most famous son, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was convicted in 2023 by a Vatican City court of numerous financial crimes and handed a more than five year prison sentence which he is currently appealing.

At the time of the cardinal’s conviction, Melis issued a public statement of support for Becciu calling the Vatican trial result a moment of “bitterness and disorientation” for local Catholics and spoke of his “immense suffering” in sympathy with Becciu. “I am truly astonished and struck dumb by such harshness,” he said at the time.

Prosecutors have asked for the precautionary seizure of some 2 million euros they allege the bishop conspired to embezzle via the Spes Cooperative charity, together with Antonio Becciu, brother of Cardinal Angelo Becciu, his wife, Giovanna Pani, couple’s the daughter, Maria Luisa Zambrano, along with Fr. Mario Curzu.

According to investigators, the funds originated with the Italian bishops’ conference and were sent to the Sardinian Diocese of Ozieri but channeled into Church charitable accounts controlled by Antonio Becciu and Fr. Curzu and used to fund business ventures.

Both Becciu and Curzu were repeatedly summoned to appear during the landmark Vatican financial crimes trial, which concluded in 2023, but refused to answer summons from the court.

Sources close to the prosecution have previously told The Pillar that the priest and the cardinal’s brother refused to appear in court because they were concerned they would face the choice either to implicate themselves in criminal activity or make false statements, which could have been used against them by Italian prosecutors.

Among the charges on which the cardinal was convicted, he was found by judges to have embezzled Church funds by arranging for more than hundreds of thousands of euros to be sent to bank accounts controlled by his brother, Antonio, who runs the Spes Cooperative, a Catholic charity in Sardinia.

The cardinal said during the trial that he authorized an initial 100,000 euro loan, later converted to a 50,000 euro donation from the Italian bishops’ conference, because he was “excited” by his brother’s charitable work which, he said, made him “blush, as a priest.”

Asked about two more payments, one of which was made from a Vatican Secretariat of State account into his brother’s personal bank account and totaled 130,000 euros, Becciu insisted that it is ordinary practice for Vatican funds to be deposited with individuals, including family members, for charitable purposes.

The cardinal was convicted for breaking Vatican City and canon laws prohibiting the alienation of Church funds or property to family members.

Italian financial police had identified forged delivery receipts for nearly 20 tons of bread, which was supposedly delivered to parishes by Spes for distribution to the poor.

In November 2022, Vatican prosecutors told the court that their Italian counterparts had found the forged receipts among nearly 1,000 pages of paperwork they examined.

When the paperwork for the supposed deliveries was produced, no one could recognize the signatures on the documents, prosecutors said.

Italian financial police concluded that invoices were created just weeks before police searches, and were fabricated to cover supposed deliveries dating back to 2018, for which no other records exist.

Also among the indicted is Cardinal Becciu’s niece, Maria Luisa Zambrano, who in 2021 conspired with her uncle to secretly record a private telephone call between him and Pope Francis discussing Vatican state secrets.

According to evidence presented in court during the cardinal’s trial, the call was recorded on Zambrano’s mobile telephone on July 24, 2021, just days before the opening of Becciu’s trial in Vatican City, and just a week after Francis underwent major surgery to remove parts of his colon.

During the call, Becicu repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to record Pope Francis agreeing to Becciu’s narrative relating to some of his alleged crimes, and to excuse him from prosecution in relation to half a million euros of Church funds which he had sent to Cecilia Marogna, the “private spy” he employed, who apparently spent the money on luxury handbags and five-star resorts. .

The conversation was recorded in Becciu’s apartment in the Palazzo San Ufficio, and without the pope’s knowledge or consent.