A powerful cardinal has been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail for embezzlement over the purchase of a former Chelsea car showroom that cost the Vatican tens of millions of euros.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, 75, once touted as a future pope, was convicted of a range of financial crimes at the end of a two-and-a-half-year trial that exposed corruption at the heart of the Holy See.
A former chief of staff to Pope Francis, he now has the dubious distinction of being the first cardinal ever to face a criminal trial before a Vatican tribunal.
So the trial was under Vatican law, in a Vatican court. Presumably the sentence will be served in a Vatican prison. So, where’s that?
Detroit?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Under Blackfriars Bridge
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/vatican-jail-trials/2021/10/14/b4619ff0-2839-11ec-8739-5cb6aba30a30_story.html
Essentially they have three own “luxury” cells, can also send to Italian prisons (typically not so cosy) and have a habit of pardoning them when they have “repented”
TMB: Well played, Sir. Forty years on I have no difficulty getting the (dark) joke thanks to my first year college room at the time being P2.
Criminals sentenced to prison by the Vatican are held in Italian prisons at Vatican expense under the terms of the 1929 Lateran Treaty.
http://spcp.prf.cuni.cz/dokument/lateran.htm
I always relate the story of signore Calvi when discussing “Working Single and Bi-Directional Lines by Pilot” with trainees, Railway Rule Book Module P2…….
They justifiably haven’t a clue and probably think i’m mad (also justifiably).
“Presumably the sentence will be served in a Vatican prison. So, where’s that? ”
Craggy Island
He gets sent to a convent.
A particulsrly harsh one where the nuns hand out regular beatings led by the Domina Superior while dressed as stormtroopers.
I stand corrected as I thought that it would simply be the case of “it’s your turn in the barrel” every day rather than just Wednesdays.
The account of the trial is absolutely hilarious.
It would be hard to imagine anything more Italian.
I’m sure the Medici and/or the Pazzi had suitably unpleasant dungeons in Firenze for the purpose.
I bet he didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.
Martin Near The M25