Vatican City - On 9 April 2024, the Italian website open.online published an article headlined: “Vatican ‘Crows’: blogger who cannot ‘keep quiet’ about the Pope to stand trial for defamation”. Although this portal, founded by Enrico Mentana, boasts of being a bulwark of fact-checking, it never contacted either Silere non possum or its editor, Marco Felipe Perfetti. Above all, it published a story that was wholly false. It was not the first time, either.
The article presented our editor as a “blogger” about to stand trial in the Vatican on a charge of defamation, with the first hearing scheduled for 12 April, all supposedly on the basis of Ansa’s “well-placed sources”. The authors themselves candidly admitted that they did not know which articles or expressions lay behind the accusations: they did not know, yet they published the story all the same. And while acknowledging that ignorance, they constructed an unmistakable narrative: the complaint was placed alongside the reform of the Vicariate ordered by Pope Francis - the removal of Cardinal Vicar Angelo De Donatis and the new role assigned to Archbishop Daniele Libanori - and the “scathing” article then appearing at the top of our newspaper.
Placed together in that way, those elements led readers to one conclusion alone, and it was false: that the Holy See, or the Vicariate - in other words, the Pope - was taking the website that criticised him to court in order to silence it. It was an operation that tarnished the image of Pope Francis, portraying him as a Pontiff determined to muzzle an inconvenient news outlet. Keep that image firmly in mind, because later we shall see who was actually working to damage Bergoglio’s reputation.
The article therefore cited Ansa’s “well-placed sources”, the Italian news agency which the international media world has, over the years, learned to view with scepticism precisely because of the ease with which it circulates false or incomplete reports. Yet to understand this affair properly - one we are discussing today because only yesterday the Vatican Court of Cassation brought it to an end - it is necessary to take a little time.
Who actually lodged the complaint against Silere non possum
On 18 November 2023, Silere non possum published a photograph on its Facebook page showing Pope Francis with Enzo Fortunato, Angelo Chiorazzo and others in the Paul VI Hall, accompanied by the following comment: “This evening, the Supreme Pontiff once again paid tribute to the Fortunato-Chiorazzo clique. The first is a careerist who uses his habit solely to promote himself; the second has faced more criminal proceedings than he has hairs on his head. Both are, of course, friends of Mauro Gambetti. Yet Francis loves all this filth, and this evening he poured into the Paul VI Hall to greet them.”
That Angelo Chiorazzo has been involved, in various capacities, in a number of criminal proceedings is not a matter of opinion: it is a fact borne out by documents held by the various public prosecutors’ offices and by serious journalistic investigations - the very journalists he recently defamed following an episode of the television programme Report. We are speaking of the violent Angelo Chiorazzo who called a colleague a “criminal and a scoundrel” and threatened him.
You may ask: Angelo Chiorazzo is insulted - not criticised, as we do, but directly insulted - by numerous people on social media. Why did he choose to lodge a complaint specifically against Silere non possum? The answer is simple. Because for years we have exposed Mauro Gambetti’s mismanagement and the abuses he commits within the Vatican Basilica. Because we have documented how Enzo Fortunato built a kingdom around his friend Gambetti for interests that have nothing to do with faith. Matters which Report itself has recently examined. That is why Angelo Chiorazzo decided to lodge a complaint against us. He did so at the instigation of Mauro Gambetti and Enzo Fortunato who, according to people close to them, “would like to report us”. Those same people were told: “If you report them, you will lose, because they have the documents and the evidence for what they say.” Someone replied: “Well, the important thing is to make life difficult for them.”
Chiorazzo therefore chose to file a complaint against us. And where? In the Vatican. Silere non possum has no physical office within Vatican City State, and that is known to everyone, since the newspaper’s details are public and readily accessible. Chiorazzo nevertheless lodged his complaint across the Tiber because he claimed to have standing to do so. Why? Because Pope Francis had appointed him an “Antechamber Attendant”. A title which in no way gives the Vice-President of the Basilicata Regional Government the right to file a complaint in the Vatican.
If anything, it demonstrates how Chiorazzo, over the years, has drawn close to a well-organised clique around Pope Francis in pursuit of wholly personal interests. Yet everything Silere non possum has reported over the years has come to light through the decisions of Leo XIV, who shut down the whole operation: Enzo Fortunato’s entire theatre, including the World Children’s Day events in which Chiorazzo also appeared.
Complaints at no cost - for those who bring them
Chiorazzo knows perfectly well that the aim is not to win: it is to cause trouble. And he can afford it. He benefits from what the Auxilium Cooperative provides for him and also receives money from the Basilicata Region, so the cost of a lawsuit - even when he loses - does not keep him awake at night. For an online newspaper, the opposite is true: every proceeding carries a burden, and twice so when the outlet has chosen to refuse public funding, a choice which Italians such as Chiorazzo certainly do not regard as self-evident in an Italy where the publishing industry draws on state money with systematic ease.
It is precisely the mechanism now visible in the Cipriani-Minetti case against Il Fatto Quotidiano, one of the very few Italian newspapers that refuses public subsidies for journalism as a matter of principle. The anomaly, the exceptional feature with no equivalent elsewhere in the world, is not that refusal: it is the very fact that a state finances the press with taxpayers’ money. The affair became public and was passed to Ansa by people presented as “well-placed sources”. They were nothing of the sort: they amounted only to a poor wretch who has long nursed a grudge against Silere non possum, guilty of having begun to expose his own little secrets too. We are speaking of Andrea Tornielli, who has long attached himself to the well-organised clique we have already described, and who, in the days before this “exclusive” was published, confided to friends and colleagues: “Ah, soon you’ll see what a lovely little present is coming.”
We have evidence of this, just as we documented the intimidatory ambush Tornielli himself laid for us at the Rimini Meeting last year. It has become a genuine obsession for the Editorial Director of Vatican Media who, between one flop and another fake news story, spends more time on Silere non possum than on Vatican News.
Silere non possum has endured many attacks over the years, and they always come from those who feel they have been struck at the core. There is a simple rule: the more vicious the attack, the more it means that you have told the truth and hit a weak spot. Let us add one point. These people - who attack and put outright falsehoods in writing because they are never able to respond on the substance - are all, without exception, being called to answer before the courts.
As you can see, we do not waste our time on posts, insults and petty digs from adolescents who never grew up. We simply do not have the time. We act. Seriously. At the proper time, we shall also disclose the manoeuvres behind them, exactly as we are doing in this case. That is the seriousness of a newspaper: speaking through documents, when a matter has reached its conclusion, and above all through evidence rather than hearsay and gossip. “We are not surprised that there are people who believe they enjoy great protection in a country known throughout the world for Mafia and corruption. It does not surprise us. We call people to answer for crimes and unlawful conduct before the competent courts. Should corruption, illegal activity or cover-ups emerge, we shall bring those to light as well. Our strength is the truth, and people follow Silere non possum for precisely that reason: because they know that here they will find documents, evidence and precise reconstructions. Not approximations. And the intimidations of the ‘great powers’ certainly do not frighten us,” said editor Marco Felipe Perfetti.
There will also be much to say about those who are called upon to intervene and instead remain silent, applying double standards. We repeat it, so there can be no misunderstanding: we shall show no mercy to those who act out of personal interest or against the law. We shall publish everything. Audio recordings, videos, photographs, screenshots, documents. Everything.
The real ‘crows’ working against the Pope
It was Andrea Tornielli, therefore, who leaked the story. What these people have failed to understand is simple: the same people who pass information to them pass it to us as well; and just as they speak to them, they speak to us. The fact that Tornielli was the person who leaked the story creates no problem for us whatsoever - far from it. Perhaps the question to ask is: why?
The problem, however, lies elsewhere: these people act blinded by hatred and envy, not for the good of the Holy See, and they are prepared to put the Pope in difficulty simply to indulge a few petty acts of spite for their own advantage. Tornielli has demonstrated this again in recent hours and, when the time comes, we shall put every document before our readers. In this case too, yes.
Tornielli, now in his sixties, continues to behave like a child in the middle of adolescence: he acts in a personal capacity yet drags the Holy See into it, even after it has already instructed him, through several channels, to stop. The only solution, as we have already written, is to send him home. There is no other way to make him understand. Especially given that he wastes time on petty spite while the work for which he is paid is one continuous flop: this is one example.
That story, moreover, was picked up by only a few other outlets, with headlines such as: “They are trying to muzzle the website that exposes the Vatican’s inner workings.” That is exactly what we tried to explain to certain people when we pointed out the absurdity of claims deliberately circulated by Tornielli’s associates, people with serious psychiatric problems: for instance, the claim that “employees, contributors and clerics who write for Silere non possum, including its editor, have been barred from entering the Vatican”.
These are false claims - only some among many - which, moreover, do the Holy See no good at all. Any serious journalist, and indeed any person of normal intelligence, immediately understands one thing: were that really happening, not only would we publish major investigative reports about it ourselves, it would amount to conclusive proof that the Vatican was a totalitarian state, and the Pope would not emerge from it well at all. Yet some people continue to regard the Vatican as a fetish and a plaything, rather than for what it is: a state required to guarantee rights and comply with the law.
Three levels of judgment, no notification
This brings us to the most worrying aspect of the entire affair. An affair made public in the hope - shared by Tornielli and the associates of the criminal clique to which he belongs of damaging the reputation of Silere non possum. As though intelligent people did not know that legal proceedings can be used, above all, to silence those who tell the truth.
Yet everything that happened, including three levels of judgment, unfolded in the gravest violation of fundamental human rights. As we reported at the time, the most serious fact is precisely this: Silere non possum learned of the proceedings only through articles published by open.online and Il Fatto Quotidiano. No formal notification was ever served on editor Marco Felipe Perfetti.
“I did not want the affair to be discussed over these years because I was personally the one required to answer for it. In practice, I was the defendant, not Silere non possum. Silere non possum is an international online newspaper followed by millions of people: it is not my blog, it is not an account of my private life. That is why I wanted to keep the two matters separate. The fact remains, however, that I was being required to answer for what the newspaper had published, and that is the first breach of any legal norm committed by Vatican City State,” Perfetti says.
Vatican law contains very clear rules governing the service of documents, yet the Vatican judicial authorities never served anything in accordance with those rules: an omission which, on its own, is sufficient to render void everything that has taken place in court over these years, in the defendant’s absence. The right to a fair trial, in short, was not guaranteed in any way.
Nor should it be forgotten that, even if Diddi does not have a clear grasp of the rules of legal procedure in general, he ought to have acted through the channels of cooperation between states. The Vatican is not a Roman neighbourhood. “Certainly, the result is in our favour and shows how someone continues to claim status, convinced that he can secure advantages merely through the honours and little awards collected over the past thirteen years. Yet it must be entered on the record that all this happened without any respect for the rule of law,” Perfetti continues.
This was also possible for another very specific reason: Alessandro Diddi - whom we have repeatedly explained in these pages has never studied either canon law or Vatican law - harbours a visceral hatred of Silere non possum and its editor.
The roots of that hatred are simple. We have never concealed the mistakes he makes, precisely because - and this is his record, however sorry we may be for him - he has never studied canon law or Vatican law. We have explained how he arrived in the Vatican. And we have never been intimidated by his threats, made in the presence of lawyers and suspects or defendants in the various proceedings we have covered.
Thus, once again, exactly as in the Sloane Avenue case, Alessandro Diddi was not entitled to act, yet acted nevertheless. And here too, as with Tornielli, what emerges is conduct harmful to the Holy See. This case did not even reach the substance of the matter - and in defamation, an offence so subjective that it always depends on the person before you and on who you are, one can even try to find a sympathetic judge, perhaps one who also has something against the defendant - because it stopped at a purely procedural issue: the Vatican judiciary has no jurisdiction, because Angelo Chiorazzo has no standing to lodge complaints in the State and Silere non possum is not subject to Vatican jurisdiction.
Faced with this, a competent person, and above all one free from resentment, ought to have said: “Fine, we tried, but the courts know more than I do, so I shall stop.” Diddi, instead, made Vatican City State spend thousands of euros pursuing this case for two full years, only to have the door shut in his face by three separate judicial bodies. Money taken from the State, money taken from the Pope, money wasted.
The art of war of those who claim to want peace
Sun Tzu teaches that wars are won before a battle is fought, on the ground of assessment and calculation: victory belongs to the person who measures and weighs everything before moving; defeat belongs to the person who relies on approximation; and almost no hope remains for those who make no calculation at all. The true strategist, he warns, achieves the highest triumph when he bends his opponent without even going to battle. The exact opposite of what certain people have been doing for years.
Against a newspaper that produces documents, evidence and precise reconstructions, they have deployed figures whose lives speak for themselves - and we have already told many of those stories. They have thrown their people into the fray like ants, without truth, without merit and without ability.
They are the ones who continue to call an international newspaper read by millions of people a blog, convinced that this bothers us or diminishes our authority in the eyes of readers. They are the ones who spread rumours and false claims, only to contradict themselves a few hours later. They are the ones who repeat that “nobody pays us any attention” while being obsessed with us: they live only to talk about us. But if nobody pays us any attention, why talk about us? If nobody pays us any attention, why does what we say irritate you? If nobody pays us any attention, why do everything possible to silence us?
This is precisely what Sun Tzu condemned as “murderous stupidity”: the general incapable of mastering his impatience sends his own men to slaughter and still does not take the city. And that is how it has gone, and how it will continue to go. The truth has no need of tricks, nor of illiterates sent out to commit petty acts of spite. Those who possess it need only wait for the accounts to balance of their own accord. They have never known how to do that.
R.R. e fr.L.V.
Silere non possum