Vatican court jails Italian historian Nicola Giampaolo 3.5 years for slandering officials in Aldo Moro sainthood bribe claim. €50K damages ordered.
Newsroom (04/11/2025, Gaudium Press ) The Vatican City State Tribunal has sentenced Nicola Giampaolo, an Italian historian and former postulator for the beatification cause of late Prime Minister Aldo Moro, to three years and six months in prison for slander, according to a statement released Oct. 30 by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Giampaolo, a Puglia native and trained journalist, was found guilty of defaming Father Bogusław Turek, Cardinal Angelo Becciu and the Dicastery itself. The court ruled that claims he made during a 2018 appearance on RAI’s investigative program Report — alleging Vatican officials offered bribes to advance Moro’s sainthood cause — were false.
In addition to the prison term, Giampaolo was barred from public office for three years and six months and ordered to pay €50,000 in damages and legal costs: €20,000 to Fr. Turek, €15,000 to Cardinal Becciu and €15,000 to the Dicastery.
The tribunal’s verdict, delivered in Italian as colpevole di calunnia, underscored the Vatican’s strict enforcement of defamation laws. Giampaolo had been removed as Moro’s postulator in April 2018 — two months before the alleged June bribe offer, a timeline the Dicastery cited in 2021 to dismiss his accusations as impossible.
Fr. Turek publicly denied the claims that year, and Vatican authorities have consistently rejected Giampaolo’s narrative.
The case highlights the operational independence of the Vatican’s judiciary, a system rooted in the 1929 Lateran Treaty and modeled on pre-1929 Italian law. The tribunal, comprising three papal-appointed judges, handles civil and criminal matters under a penal code that treats slander as a serious offense. Appeals may proceed to the Court of Appeal and, ultimately, the Supreme Court of Vatican City State, presided over by the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura.
Prosecution is led by the Promoter of Justice, the Vatican’s equivalent of a public prosecutor.
High-profile trials, including the 2012 Vatileaks scandal, have drawn global scrutiny to the microstate’s legal proceedings.
As of publication, Giampaolo has issued no public response and has not indicated plans to appeal. The ruling stands as the Vatican’s final judgment in the matter.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Catholic Herald
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