VATICAN CITY
Star Tribune
By FRANCES D’EMILIO Associated Press NOVEMBER 2, 2015
VATICAN CITY — A Spanish priest and an Italian laywoman who had served on a financial reform commission set up by Pope Francis have been arrested in the probe into yet another leak of confidential information and documents, the Vatican said Monday.
A statement from the Holy See’s press office said that Vatican prosecutors on Monday upheld the arrests of the two, who had been interrogated over the weekend.
It identified the woman as Francesca Chaouqui and the priest as Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda. He is still a Vatican employee. Both of them had served on a now-defunct commission that had been set up by Pope Francis in 2013 as part of his drive to reform the Holy See’s finances.
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said Vallejo Balda is being held in a jail cell in Vatican City. Chaouqui was allowed to go free because she cooperated in the probe, the Vatican said.
Chaouqui “has furnished the maximum cooperation and deposited documents in support of what she declared,” her lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA. Noting that her client was already back home, Bongiorno added “she is sure she will very rapidly clarify her position.”
Bongiorno, who successfully won acquittal for Amanda Knox’s co-defendant in an internationally watched murder trial, is one of Italy’s top criminal lawyers. She didn’t immediately answer phone calls seeking further comment.
Chaouqui, on her LinkedIn profile, describes herself as a communications expert who was the only woman, the only under-55-year-old and the only Italian woman on the pontifical commission.
Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic religious movement, expressed “surprise and pain” over Vallejo Balda’s arrest. It described him in a statement as belonging to a priestly society linked to Opus Dei, and added it had no information on the case.
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