VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast
Barbie Latza Nadeau
The Vatican is trying two journalists and their alleged sources for revealing corruption and cronyism at the Holy See.
VATICAN CITY — When Italian journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi walk into a Vatican tribunal on Tuesday morning, it will be the first time in centuries that anyone has been tried for what amounts to heresy at the Holy See. The two journalists are officially charged with the “unlawful disclosure of information and confidential documents” used in books (Merchants in the Temple by Nuzzi and Avarizia or Greed by Fittipaldi) published in November, but the reality feels a little bit more like the return of the Inquisition.
In fact, Nuzzi has been able garner considerable support on social network channels by asking followers to tweet pictures of his book cover under the hashtag #noinquisition (#noinquisizione in Italian). “Revealing secret [Vatican] news does not earn a medal, as happens for the free press in the entire democratic world,” he wrote on his website on November 10 when he refused to meet the Vatican’s Promoter of Justice, who acts as the attorney general in Vatican cases. “Instead it is always, and in every case, a crime.”
So worrying is the potential infringement on the free press by the Holy See that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) reprimanded the Vatican for going ahead with the trial. “Journalists must be free to report on issues of public interest and to protect their confidential sources,” said Dunja Mijatovic, a spokesman for OSCE said in a statement released on Monday. “I call on the authorities not to proceed with the charges and protect journalists’ rights in accordance with OSCE commitments.”
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