In December 2023, Cardinal Becciu—once considered a leading candidate for the papacy—became one of several defendants sentenced to prison by a Vatican tribunal for financial crimes against the Church. The case, dubbed the Vatican “trial of the century,” is a high-profile example of Pope Francis’ fight against corruption within the Church, one of his top priorities since taking charge. Despite the convictions, the trial embroiled the Vatican in controversy about the fairness of its legal system and the Pope’s allegedly improper involvement in the investigation. There is extensive debate as to whether the Pope’s actions were justified.

What is less open to debate, however, is that international press coverage was highly critical of the Vatican. Major news outlets picked up and ran with defendants’ claims that certain papal actions amounted to “unacceptable abuses” and “invalidated the entire justice of the trial.” For example, the New York Times described the trial as “rais[ing] as many questions about the Vatican’s judicial system, the competence of its officials and the pope’s style of governance as it did about [the] crime.” The Washington Post said the Vatican emerged from the trial “worse for wear, with new questions raised about the effectiveness and fairness of its legal system.” The Associated Press’ (AP) reporting, which is reproduced in publications across the globe, is particularly worth highlighting. In an article titled “The First Outside Legal Analyses of Vatican’s ‘Trial of the Century’ Are In, And They’re Critical,” the AP featured Professor Geraldina Boni’s claims that the Pope’s actions “represented a clear violation of the right to a fair trial,” and raised the prospect of a “violation of divine law to which even the pope is subject.” These and other news articles included rebuttals from Vatican officials, but those rebuttals mostly consisted of conclusory platitudes, such as the claim that the trial was carried out “in full respect of the guarantees for the suspects,” or condemnation of the criticisms as “on the level of international heresy.”

As earlier posts on this blog have highlighted, because public opinion of a government’s anticorruption work is an important factor in whether the work succeeds, public relations is a “crucial tool” in fighting corruption. Negative media coverage is a familiar issue to those in the anticorruption field. Targets of a corruption probe will often do their best to delegitimize it. Common tactics include casting the probe as a politically motivated witch-hunt, or, as here, denouncing the legitimacy of the process as an unfair, abusive violation of human rights. How anticorruption authorities respond to these accusations may play a significant role in the perception and legitimacy of the prosecutions. The consistently negative press coverage of the Vatican’s prosecution of these cases suggests the Vatican made mistakes in its public relations strategy. Is that correct? And if so, what might the explanation be?

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