Judges told the Vatican’s former auditor general that his termination lawsuit can not move forward unless his lawyers exclude from their case evidence that judges consider “immoral and indecent” — including evidence of alleged financial misconduct that could harm the “good name” of high-ranking Vatican officials.
The directive came from Vatican City judges considering whether to admit former Vatican auditor Libero Milone’s appeal against the 2024 rejection of his wrongful termination lawsuit.
Milone, who says he was forced out of his auditing job in 2017 for being too effective, is due back in court on the appeal this May. One of his attorneys has resigned from the case because of the Vatican court’s unusual ruling.
In a decision issued October of last year, judges told Milone’s lawyers that their lawsuit appeal could not include or present swaths of evidence in their appeal, on the grounds that it would harm the “good name” of curial officials and departments.
Court documents obtained by The Pillar show that the October order was litigated during a November 2024 hearing, and then affirmed by judges in January, who ruled that Milone’s arguments in the case could harm the public interest by attributing immoral behavior to Vatican officials.
“In the general and repeated attribution to persons holding top positions in the Roman Curia of practices that are at least immoral and certainly indecent such as those outlined in the appeal document, the Court believes that there is a public interest in intervening,” the judges decided in an order signed Jan. 8.
But Milone’s legal team has argued that the “offensive” evidence forms the basis for their appeal, and would show that Milone and his team uncovered widespread financial irregularities and malpractice in the Vatican — which, they argue, led to his forced departure from office.
Sources close to the case told The Pillar this week that in response to the court order, one of Milone’s lead attorneys, Romano Vaccarella, resigned from the case last November, calling it “unheard of” for judges to dictate the arguments and evidence which can be used in an appeal before hearing them in full.
The Jan. 8 ruling from the Vatican City court of appeal acknowledged that Milone’s lawyers had challenged the legal validity of the October order, which was issued in response to concerns raised by the Vatican City Office of the Promoter of Justice.
But they concluded that the promoter of justice had a legal right to flag matters of “public interest,” including the prospect of damaged to officials’ reputations and interests.
Because the proposed evidence related to officials and departments from whom Milone is not directly seeking damages, the judges decided, evidence concerning them could not be presented:
“The request for compensation advanced by the appellant parties does not include those persons who are directly or indirectly defendants in this proceeding and the handling of the request does not therefore require attributing to them facts which are extraneous to the case,” read the ruling.
Milone was appointed by Pope Francis as the first auditor general of the Vatican in 2015.
In 2017, he was forced to resign by then-sosituto Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who accused Milone and his deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, of “spying” on the private financial affairs of senior curial officials including Becciu.
In a separate case, Becciu was convicted of corruption and abuse of office by a Vatican City court in December 2023.
At the time of their departure from office, both Milone and Pannico were detained for hours by Vatican City gendarmes and threatened with prosecution if they refused to resign their posts. Cardinal Becciu released a statement at the time, confirming his role in Milone’s detention, and that the auditor would have faced prosecution had he not agreed to resign.
Milone alleges that he was forced from office because he had discovered systematic corruption in the highest levels of the Roman curia and that his office and computer had been put under surveillance for months.
In preparation for the lawsuit’s initial trial at the lower court, Panicco and Milone filed several hundred pages of documents, which they said would prove widespread corruption among senior curial officials at the Vatican, and prove that they were forced out for discovering that corruption.
Those filings, which lawyers have been trying to reintroduce at appeal, were excluded by the lower court as irrelevant to the case.
Milone has in the past indicated he would consider releasing those files to the public if his lawsuit proves unsuccessful.
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While Milone’s legal team is asking to present evidence which they believe is crucial to their case, lawyers for the Vatican Secretariat of State are seeking to block the appeal from coming to trial at all.
At a hearing on November 13 last year, the secretariat’s lawyers repeated their argument that, since Milone was appointed by Pope Francis, his suit from wrongful termination is really an attempt to appeal a decision of the Roman Pontiff — prohibited by canon law.
Milone’s lawyers in turn cited treaty law between the Vatican and the Italian state from 1932, which allowed for the summons of “the person of the Cardinal Secretary of State” in cases “where the Holy See can be summoned to court,” and “likewise for the private patrimony of the Supreme Pontiff, the summons must be made in the person of the Secretary of State.”
The secretariat’s lawyer countered that the 1932 treaty dealt with cases being tried in Italian, not Vatican, courts. Regarding Vatican City law, the lawyer said “as a principle of substance, a decision taken by the Supreme Pontiff is simply removed from the jurisdiction of this tribunal and any other tribunal,” according to court transcripts of the hearing reviewed by The Pillar.
Milone’s team dispute that Pope Francis made the decision to have the auditors removed from office under threat of criminal prosecution, pointing instead to Cardinal Becciu’s publicly acknowledged role in the event:
“The person responsible for the expulsion of Dr. Milone and Dr. Panicco would be the then substitute from the Secretariat of State, Cardinal Becciu, who reported to Dr. Milone that he no longer had the Pope's trust but he practically prevented him from speaking directly with the Pope in the last six months, while previously he was used to meeting the Pope every week,” Milone’s lawyers argued.
“But we don’t know, it is a mystery, whether it was actually the pope who wanted Milone's resignation — probably not, because he had appointed him and chosen him carefully.”
The secretariat’s legal team responded by noting that “Cardinal Becciu has not been called as a defendant,” and that if “it is a mystery who caused the resignation of Milone and Panicco” then the burden of proof is on Milone’s team to prove it was not the pope. Milone’s lawyers, in turn, argue that they can only do so by being allowed to make a full presentation of their evidence regarding Vatican financial corruption.
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While the court did not conclude that Milone and Panicco had been rightly forced from their jobs, the judges rejected the argument that the Secretariat of State was liable for their ouster, loss of earnings, and subsequent damage to their reputations.
In addition to rejecting their requests for compensation, the court also ordered both men, including the deceased Panicco, to pay legal costs amounting to more than 100,000 euros between them.
Having sought unsuccessfully for an out of court settlement with the Vatican for years, Milone and Panicco announced in November 2022 that they would sue their former employers for wrongful termination, loss of earnings, and reputational damage over their ouster from office.
The next hearing in the appeal case is set for May 6.
