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When more than 130 Cardinals officially raise the Sistin Church on May 7 to start voting on among them he will lead the Roman Catholic Church as the next Pope, there will be one Cardinal that was left in the cold.
The Cardinal Angelo Besio – a former energy player before his involvement in the Financial Vatican scandal in the Vatican to resign from his positions and abandon some privileges being Cardinal – on Tuesday that he would sit this.
For the sake of the Church’s interest, he said in a statement sent by his lawyer, he pledged to obey, “The will of Pope Francis for not entering the star, although I am still convinced of my innocence.”
But in the days after Francis died last week, it was not clear whether the Pope had already stripped the cardinal rights, or whether he had returned it. The Cardinal Besio, who in 2023 received a guilty prison sentence from the Vatican Court on charges of fraud and embezzlement, saw the migration of the Cardinals to Rome for the side and required.
The Cardinal, the former papal chief of staff who led the office of the saint’s manufacture in the church, was from his hometown of Sardinia to Rome. He insisted on joining his colleagues in the pre -orientation meetings behind closed doors, where they discussed the major challenges of the church. But also for him.
The possibility of Swiss guards, who wore the 76 -year -old Cardinal from the Sistin Church, led to gossip and speculations in restaurants throughout the Vatican. Italian television correspondents ran after the Cardinate around the Saint Peter Square, screaming, “Will Bessio be on the side?” The case was kidnapped by the journalistic surroundings in the Vatican, where the correspondents asked whether the BecCIU case would postpone the date of Conclave. (“In the sense”, one of them asked, “There is no Pessio, no Koning?”)
Cardinal Pesio felt itself with the weight of history.
“The moment”, told the New York Times last week, “sensitive.”
The issue of his eligibility was not only sensitive to his feelings. The matter also had repercussions that exceed his individual voting, which led to a crisis in the Vatican, where the conservative colleagues, who are preparing for bruises in the elections stacked with the voters appointed by the most progressive Francis, suggested that there is a prohibited production from the Cardinal Becciu that will be illegal, which is likely to hold the team illegal, as well.
For the Vatican, the result was a dispersed and perhaps catastrophic side show, as angry Cardinal who was subjected to the risk of the old process and the deep organization to elect the world’s Catholic leader is about 1.4 billion Catholics.
In 2023, the Cardinal Church Court found a guilty of fraud and embezzlement and was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. He resumes his condemnation and denies committing any violations. But the most relevant strike against him due to the sharing of the flavor came in one line of the Press Office in the Vatican in 2020, when Pope Francis stripped him of what the Vatican called “his rights linked to cardinnouss.” This left the status of cardinal in the public domain is somewhat inaccurate and open to interpretation.
At that time, Cardinal Besio acknowledged that voting in the flavor was one of the rights he lost. But last week changed his melody.
“The Pope has realized my basic privileges as sound,” Cardinal Besio told his hometown of Sardinian, Lioni Sarda, while maintaining that the Pope did not formally strip him of voting rights. He said he was intending to “participate in the side.”
The Vatican Law states that the Cardinals who lost the right to vote in Conclave cannot restore them by their Cardinate colleagues in the period between the Popes. The Cardinal Besio said that Pope Francis may rest him after years of special meetings. Cardinal told Reuters last week that during one meeting in January about his situation, Francis told him, “I think I found a solution.”
The Vatican site still lists the Cardinocarbling of the age of 80 years, and therefore they are still qualified to vote in Conclave, Cardinal BecCIU’s classification as “unleashed”. (“No legal value,” Cardinal Bisio Lukeen told Sarada about the list.)
Cardinal Besio and his supporters said that there is nothing written from the Pope makes his deprived official.
So it seems that the Vatican is quick to produce some evidence. The Italian newspaper, Domani, reported last week that Cardinal Petro Parolin, former Cardinal Besio president and the second in Francis, showed the letters of the Cardinal Besio signed with F by Francis, who recently signed the hospital before his death, with the exception of the Cardinal from the Cardinal.
Conservatives who believed that Cardinal Besio got a raw deal that they wanted to see such evidence.
“It is the issue of where the document expressed by the Pope,” said Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller of Germany, who said he had seen nothing outside the single line of the press office. “And excluding the Cardinal from his rights? There should be not only a decision from the Pope, but there should be a reason and failure. He did nothing wrong, right?”
The Vatican Court ruled that he committed some things wrongly.
In 2021, Cardinal Besio became the first Kardinal ever being tried by the Vatican Criminal Court. I found it guilty of fraud related to more than half a million euros, or $ 570,000, from the Vatican money, some of which were used to pay the price of the Colombian nun, which was kidnapped by jihadists in Mali.
The court found that the Cardinal had transferred the money through a woman working to release Sardinia, who is called the church in general and Italian news reports. They used some money to buy luxury goods, including Chanel and Prada Governor. It is later The goods said necessary for its professional activity.
The court also convicted him of embezzlement. One of the cases stems from the use of Vatican funds to submit a donation of about 125,000 euros to a charity run by his brother, who was partially used to build a baking oven in the diocese of Sardini.
The accusation of the last investment of hundreds of millions of euros in a building in London has decreased in value, which cost the church more than 200 million euros of losses when it was sold – a catastrophic real estate deal that the Vatican said that the Vatican was a criminal speculation.
Cardinal Besio’s lawyers and other defendants confirmed that they were subjected to railways, saying that Francis had secretly changed the laws during the investigation, making it difficult for them to defend themselves. (“International heresy”, and the Vatican Prosecutor responded.)
After such a sharp fall from Grace and Vatican Power, the BecCIU vote in Conclave was another little financial leverage. But by Tuesday morning, he seemed to have spent or lost that as well. In the statement sent by his lawyer, Cardinal Besio wrote that he would “continue to serve” the church with love, and promised not to break the scope, in order to contribute to the “company and serenity”.
Elizabetta Povulido and Emma Bobola The reports contributed.