A cardinal convicted of financial crimes by the Vatican said Tuesday he will not take part in the secret conclave to elect the new pope. <\/p>\n
Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, once one of the most powerful figures in the Vatican, was ordered by Pope Francis in 2020 to resign the \u201crights and privileges\u201d of a cardinal after he became embroiled in a Vatican financial scandal. <\/p>\n
Following the pope\u2019s death last week, Becciu launched an appeal in support of his right to be in the conclave, but on Tuesday, he issued a statement announcing he was formally pulling out. \u201cI have decided to obey, as I have always done, Pope Francis\u2019 will not to enter the Conclave while remaining convinced of my innocence,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Cardinals have chosen May 7 as the date to start conclave and elect a new leader for 1.4 billion Catholics around the world, the Vatican announced Monday. <\/p>\n
Becciu\u2019s decision to withdraw from the conclave comes just seven days after he told a Sardinian newspaper that \u201cthere was no explicit will to exclude me from the conclave nor a request for my explicit renunciation in writing.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Sardinian cardinal previously held the position of \u201csostituto\u201d (\u201csubstitute\u201d) in the Holy See\u2019s Secretariat of State – a papal chief of staff equivalent. The role offered Becciu walk-in privileges to see the pope and he commanded huge authority across the church\u2019s central government. He was later moved to a position running the Vatican\u2019s saint-making department. <\/p>\n
Becciu was convicted of embezzlement and fraud in 2023 and handed a five-and-a-half-year jail sentence. He is the first cardinal to be convicted by the Vatican\u2019s criminal court. <\/p>\n
But the cardinal, who has always maintained his innocence, launched an appeal that\u2019s currently still under consideration. He\u2019s allowed to continue to live in a Vatican apartment while this process is underway. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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A cardinal convicted of financial crimes by the Vatican said Tuesday he will not take part in the secret conclave to elect the new pope. Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, once one of the most powerful figures in the Vatican, was ordered by Pope Francis in 2020 to resign the \u201crights and privileges\u201d of a cardinal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}