Giovanni Angelo Becciu

On 15 October 2001, Pope John Paul II appointed him Apostolic Nuncio to Angola and Titular Archbishop of Rusellae.[1] On 15 November he was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to São Tomé and Principe as well.[2] He received his episcopal consecration on 1 December 2001 from Cardinal Angelo Sodano with co-consecrators Archbishop Paolo Romeo, a Vatican diplomat, and Bishop Sebastiano Sanguinetti, who hailed from Becciu's native diocese in Sardinia.

Becciu "played a crucial rôle"[3] in the controversial 2005 appointment of Filomeno do Nascimento Vieira Dias, then auxiliary bishop of Luanda, as bishop of Cabinda. Because he was not from Cabinda and because of his family links to the regime of José Eduardo dos Santos, Vieira Dias’s appointment was met with massive protests by Cabindan Catholics, and his installation was delayed for well over a year.[4][5][6] The controversy around Vieira Dias’s nomination resulted in the beating of Apostolic Administrator Eugenio Dal Corso while he was preparing to celebrate mass,[7] the suspension of a number of priests,[8] and a protracted strike in which many Cabindan clergy refused to celebrate mass for several months.[9][8][10] In response, Becciu emphasized that Vieira Dias's nomination was a matter of papal prerogative and would not be revoked.[11] Becciu went to Cabinda in order to meet with Dal Corso and with local clergy and laypeople. His meeting with laypeople was "hostile"[10] and his car was stoned by a crowd.[6] Vieira Dias's installation ultimately took place in June 2006.[9]

In advance of Benedict XVI's 2009 visit to Angola, Becciu defended the pope's rejection of condoms as a means of preventing the spread of AIDS, saying "It's too easy and it's very cheap to say the solution of AIDS is the condom, you don't have the solution there.... So what the Pope is saying is that we must surpass this, because AIDS means there is a lack of understanding of the concept of true love between men and women.... Because of that, many times we are not of the same thinking as NGOs."[12]

As he left Angola for his next assignment, Becciu denounced popular belief in witchcraft that led to children being accused as sorcerers and abused: "the charges are a frequent practice on the African continent and they must be eliminated".[13][lower-alpha 1]

On 23 July 2009 Pope Benedict named him Apostolic Nuncio to Cuba.[15][16] Becciù's selection for this challenging role was seen by observers as a sign of his high reputation in Rome.[17] Cuban President Raul Castro praised his work on behalf of improved relations between Cuba and the Holy See.[18]

In January 2015, after Cuba and the United States announced efforts to improve their relationship, Becciù, now the Substitute of the Secretariat of State, expressed his support an end to the U.S. embargo, citing "the right of peoples not to be deprived of daily economic and social subsistence". He credited the thaw in relations to Pope Francis, "the true protagonist, silent but effective". He said he expected the Cuban government to introduce a less centralized economic system and commented: "There will be contradictions, but it will be up to their masterful capabilities to solve them."[19]

Becciu in 2013

During the conclave that followed the resignation of Benedict XVI, Becciu was responsible for directing the Vatican personnel who ensured the security and secrecy of its proceedings.[23] A few months after his election as pope, Pope Francis named a new Secretary of State and confirmed Becciu's appointment as Substitute.[24]

In his role as substitute, Becciu periodically spoke on behalf of the Vatican, addressing specific events in the news while allowing the pope to avoid becoming involved in public debates.

When stolen documents about Vatican finances were leaked to the press, Becciu downplayed the sharp disagreements between Curial officials that they documented. He wrote in 2012 that some "criticize the monarchic and absolutist nature of the church's central government" but then pretend to be "scandalized because someone writing to the pope expresses ideas or even complaints about how that government is organized. Many of the published documents do not reveal power struggles or vendettas, but the freedom of thought which the church is criticized for not allowing."[25][26]

In January 2014, when the retired Commander of the Swiss Guard Elmar Mäder told the Swiss weekly Sonntag that a gay network existed in the Roman Curia, Becciu condemned “generic accusations” and challenged Mäder to provide specifics: "When he was in service, did he have any suspects? Are these suspects still present? … Okay then, come here and tell us exactly to whom it relates."[27]

Unnamed sources within the Vatican alleged in 2015 that he attempted to conceal a $200 million London real estate purchase in violation of accounting rules regulating creative accounting.[28]

In January 2016, discussing books that charged the Vatican with financial mismanagement, Becciu defended Vatican employees: "The Vatican is not a den of thieves. To represent it as such constitutes an absolute falsehood. I find it extremely unjust that our employees, proudly carrying out a service for the pope and the church, have gotten to the point, for some time now, of being ashamed to tell people they work here."[29]

In December 2016, discussing reactions to Pope Francis' comments in his apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia on the pastoral care of Catholics in irregular marriages, Becciu said: "I will not go into the controversies but I do wish to reiterate the principles I have always been taught by the healthy tradition of the Church: as the Pope's humble collaborator, I feel I have a duty to loyally tell him what I think when a decision is being taken. Once it is taken, I obey the Holy Father fully."[30]

When a Catholic radio station broadcast a Dominican friar's statement that the enactment of same-sex civil unions had caused recent earthquakes, Becciu said "They are offensive statements for believers and scandalous for those who do not believe."[31]

Asked about U.S. President Donald Trump's order restricting immigration in January 2017, Becciu said: "Certainly there is concern because we are messengers of another culture, that of openness... The pope insists on the capacity for integration [of] those who arrive in our society and culture.... We are builders of bridges, not of walls. Christians must be strong in reaffirming this message."[32]

In his August 2018 “Testimony,” Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò alleged that Becciu, as substitute, “knew in every detail the situation” regarding former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual abuse of adult priests and seminarians, reports of which had reached Rome. In his capacity as substitute, Becciu had direct contact with McCarrick on numerous occasions. In his book Il Giorno del Giudizio, Andrea Tornielli states that after "each" of the international trips he undertook in and around the year 2012—unauthorized trips that he was not supposed to undertake[33]—McCarrick would send detailed reports that he addressed to the pope, Vatican Secretary of State Bertone, and Substitute Becciu, even receiving responses of thanks from the Secretariat of State.[34] Further, according to emails leaked by Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo, a former aide to Theodore McCarrick, McCarrick had plans to meet with Becciu in person on February 14, 2013, immediately before the 2013 conclave; he was also involved in helping arrange a 2016 meeting between Pope Francis and McCarrick.[35]

During his time as substitute, Becciu was reportedly involved in repeated attempts to secure loans to support the Istituto Dermopatico dell'Immacolata (IDI), a struggling hospital in Rome originally owned by the Italian province of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception (PICFIC).

In July 2011, Fr. Franco Decaminada, the president of the IDI, approached Becciu with a proposal that the Vatican supply the IDI with 200 million euros to take over Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital. In September 2011, Decaminada hired Becciu’s niece Maria Piera Becciu as his personal secretary. The proposal to buy San Raffaele ultimately came to nothing. In October 2019, Becciu professed not to remember the proposal and stated that he "never dealt with this question."[36][37]

The IDI eventually went bankrupt in 2012 with debts of more than 800 million euros. PICFIC was declared insolvent by an Italian court in 2013, and Decaminada was arrested in 2013 and, along with 40 other figures in the IDI’s administration, was charged with using the hospital for embezzlement and money laundering, including the diversion of hundreds of thousands of euros of IDI money into an oil exploration company. Decaminada was sent to prison and laicized.[37][38][39]

In February 2013, Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi to govern the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception, PICFIC’s parent order, as his pontifical delegate and to be commissioner of the IDI.[40][41][38] Late in 2014, Cardinal Versaldi and Becciu reportedly requested that the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the Vatican's commercial bank, grant a 50 million euro loan to IDI in order to keep it afloat. Determining that the IDI would never be able to repay the loan, the IOR board in 2015 rejected the proposal, with Cardinal George Pell, the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, reportedly "vocally opposed" to it.[42] Becciu and Versaldi subsequently requested that the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) grant a similar 50 million euro loan to the Fondazione Luigi Maria Monti (FLMM), a for-profit partnership of the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception that had been created to take over the IDI and nominally replace PICFIC as the owner the hospital.[42][38] The FLMM shared some of the same leadership personnel as PICFIC and has been described as “nothing other than the friars under a different name.”[38][43] APSA granted the loan to the FLMM, possibly in contravention of international regulatory agreements not to provide commercial loans, and in April 2015 the FLMM acquired the IDI for a reported 131 million euros.[37] Reportedly influenced by the lobbying of Becciu, Pope Francis subsequently withdrew oversight over APSA’s investment decisions from Pell’s office.[42]

In order to remove the loan from APSA's books, officials from the Secretariat of State sought a $25 million grant in June 2017 from the U.S.-based Papal Foundation. Lay board members were reportedly initially led to believe that the loan would go to fund the IDI; in fact, the recipient of the grant was the Holy See.[43] The grant request created internal turmoil inside the Papal Foundation and the disbursement of funds was repeatedly stalled; in the end, the $13 million already disbursed to the Holy See was reclassified as a "loan" against future foundation grants. In October 2019, APSA’s head conceded that it had had to write off 30 million euros of the loan after the Papal Foundation grant was stopped.[44] While some sources in APSA told reporters that Becciu was behind the grant request to the Papal Foundation, Becciu denied this, stating that after Pietro Parolin’s assumption of the office of Secretary of State in 2013, he “no longer concerned [him]self with IDI.” In November 2019, Cardinal Parolin claimed that he was personally responsible for the APSA loan to the FLMM and the request to the Papal Foundation.[45]

In 2012, Angolan businessman Antonio “Mosquito” Mbakassi,[lower-alpha 3] an “oligarch”[48][47] with close ties to the family of then-president José Eduardo dos Santos[49][50] who had met Becciu during the latter’s time as nuncio to Angola, directly approached the Vatican secretariat of state to propose that the Holy See invest $200 million in an oil exploration project to be carried out by his company Falcon Oil Holdings SA.[lower-alpha 4] Credit Suisse, which served as the banker and financial adviser to the secretariat, asked WRM, the family office and investment fund of London-based Italian financier Raffaele Mincione, to perform due diligence on the potential loan. WRM advised against the loan, and the money was instead invested in a property deal through Mr. Mincione.[52]