Sloane Avenue trial: court of appeal tears apart Diddi’s approach

Vatican City - This morning, in the Vatican City State, a hearing was held before the Court of Appeal in the Sloane Avenue trial. The bench issued a preliminary order set to have a decisive impact on the entire case: the trial proceedings must be conducted again, in light of what were deemed substantial violations of the right of defence.

The order does not address the substance of the charges, but intervenes on procedural grounds, rigorously reconstructing the course followed during the investigative phase and at first instance. The central issue concerns the case file of the Promoter of Justice and its incompleteness at the time the request for trial was made.

Silere non possum’s reporting

It should not be forgotten that Silere non possum had begun reporting these facts from the moment that, in this controversial trial, conduct began to emerge that was incompatible with the most basic procedural safeguards. It was Silere non possum that published the rescripta which Alessandro Diddi, by contrast, did not want to be made public. For years, our publication has repeatedly drawn attention to the serious violations of the right of defence that have marked these proceedings, and today the Court of Appeal has set down in black and white what had long been denounced.

This is no minor detail. In recent weeks, Alessandro Diddi was forced to leave the criminal proceedings, exiting the scene at a decisive stage of the trial. And the reminder of the importance of safeguards comes not only from the order issued today. Just last Saturday, when opening the judicial year, Leo XIV had indicated the path with clarity: “Within the context of the Vatican City State, the task of administering justice takes on particularly significant importance. The administration of justice is not limited to the resolution of disputes, but contributes to the protection of the legal order and the credibility of institutions. Observance of procedural guarantees, the impartiality of the judge, the effectiveness of the right of defence and the reasonable duration of proceedings do not merely represent technical instruments of judicial procedure. They constitute the conditions through which the exercise of judicial authority acquires particular authority and contributes to institutional stability.”

Today’s order

According to the Court, in 2021 - when the request to commit the defendants to trial was made - the rules in force required the full disclosure of the case papers. The subsequent 2022 reform, which allows for selective disclosure, cannot be applied retroactively. It follows that the defendants and their lawyers should have had access to the entire body of investigative material from the outset.

The principle is stated clearly: “everything must be known to the parties and nothing may be examined by the judge unless it has first been made available to the parties.” This wording directly recalls the canonical procedural tradition and the Vatican codified system, founded on genuine adversarial proceedings. The Court stresses that this was not a mere formal irregularity, but a substantive breach of the right of defence. The trial, as conducted at first instance, also relied on documents not fully accessible to the parties, some of which were filed late or in incomplete form. Hence the need to intervene.

The four Rescripta

A second key point in the order concerns the four pontifical Rescripta - dated 2 July 2019, 5 July 2019, 9 October 2019 and 13 February 2020 - adopted by Pope Francis during the investigation. The Court draws careful distinctions. Some of these acts are considered lawful and not directly affecting the position of the defendants, insofar as they were intended to regulate organisational matters or to permit the procedural use of certain documentary sources. In these cases, the judges exclude any breach of safeguards.

A different assessment is made in relation to the Rescriptum of 2 July 2019, which authorised the Promoter of Justice to proceed “in the forms of summary procedure”. According to the bench, that act introduced a significant derogation from the ordinary rules and directly affected the structure of the proceedings. Precisely for this reason, the Court states, that Rescriptum “should have been published or, at the very least, brought to the attention of those against whom measures were being taken.” The fact that it was not knowable by those concerned therefore renders unlawful the investigative acts founded upon it.

It is significant that the bench chose to base its decision exclusively on Vatican law, ruling out recourse to external standards such as the European Convention on Human Rights, and thus reaffirming that the procedural system of the Vatican City State already contains within itself the principles necessary to guarantee a fair trial. This is a point that the director of Silere non possum, Marco Felipe Perfetti, has repeatedly made in these pages over recent years, also reminding Italian lawyers admitted to practise before the Vatican courts not to misunderstand the heart of the matter: the problem was not the canonical and Vatican legal system, which already provided the necessary safeguards, but the alterations that had been introduced and the failure to apply the rules by those called to administer justice.

The judges’ decision

Having established these critical issues, the Court did not order the proceedings to be quashed in their entirety, but instead opted for the renewal of the trial proceedings directly at the appeal stage. This is a choice that makes it possible to bring the case back within a framework of legality, while at the same time avoiding the indiscriminate nullification of all acts. In the operative part of the order, the judges instruct the Promoter of Justice, who is currently Roberto Zanotti because Alessandro Diddi was forced to leave this trial, to file the investigative acts in full; the parties are then granted time to examine them and prepare their defence. Only at that point may the trial resume.

The next hearing has been set for 9 a.m. on 22 June, for the purpose of establishing the timetable for the subsequent sittings. The bench has therefore chosen to bring the criminal trial, in the Vatican City State, back into compliance with the safeguards expressly called for by Leo XIV at the opening of the judicial year of the Vatican City State.

The article continues for subscribers. The full order is available.