Vatican City – Order No. 24/25 of the Court of Cassation of the Vatican City State arises from the motion for recusal filed by several parties before the Court of Appeal against the Promoter of Justice Alessandro Diddi. As Silere non possum has documented—by publishing in full the conversations between the convicted Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui and Genoveffa Ciferri, as well as the exchanges between Ciferri and Diddi himself—his continued participation in the proceedings was wholly incompatible with the serene and impartial exercise of prosecutorial functions: in a trial in which such relationships and interlocutions are relevant, Diddi cannot continue to act as Promoter of Justice.
That the Roman lawyer was fully aware of the seriousness of those conversations is confirmed by a specific fact: the defence teams were effectively prevented from accessing those records. In coordination with Giuseppe Pignatone, now involved in Italian criminal proceedings in which links with organised crime are alleged, the content of the chats was rendered virtually inaccessible because it was almost entirely redacted, depriving the parties of the possibility to verify their scope and implications. In recent days the Court of Cassation was seized of the matter and was called upon to rule on the recusal of the Promoter of Justice. Alessandro Diddi, however, shortly before the meeting of the Panel, submitted to the Registry a copy of his declaration of abstention in the proceedings pending before the Court of Appeal.
A Promoter of Justice who confuses the role with his own person
In the document addressed to the Court of Appeal (subject Prot. No. 26-23 RG App.), Diddi writes that the abstention follows a request for recusal submitted by certain defendants; he adds that he considers the grounds advanced by the recusing parties unfounded, but nevertheless declares that he abstains because there exist “serious reasons of expediency”, and he invokes provisions of the Vatican code that he has never studied. It is an act which, revealing though it already is, still remains within a formal framework. The real problem emerges in the text Diddi addresses to the Supreme Court of Cassation: here the abstention is transformed into an autobiographical manifesto, an exercise in institutional victimhood which, in an Italian trial (and in any legal system worldwide!), would make anyone who has even merely seen a courtroom through binocularsrecoil. Diddi writes that his decision is “intimately painful”, and that it is guided “exclusively” by the wish to prevent “insinuations and falsehoods about my person” from being “instrumentally used” to “damage and prejudice” the ascertainment of the truth. This is the grammar of the ‘I’, not that of law. It is the centrality of the Roman lawyer, not that of the trial. Alessandro Diddi has turned the office of Promoter of Justice of a most peculiar State into an unacceptable stage.
“Bitterness” before the law: a theatrical scene, not one for Cassation
Diddi does not limit himself to acknowledging the rules; he places his feelings on the record: “Nor can I remain silent about the bitterness that the decision of this Supreme Court to preclude me from the possibility of providing my declaratory contribution has caused me.” Everything is here: the misunderstanding of the role and the institutional short circuit. In a serious legal order, the public prosecution does not “remain silent about bitterness” because a Court applies a procedural mechanism. It does not assert its own “declaratory contribution” as if it were a personal right that has been infringed. It does not stage a drama because the trial does not bend to its communicative needs. Yet Diddi insists, even going so far as to say that he could have provided “further and necessary elements” and to express “astonishment” at the fact that the defence counsel had referred in their submissions to his own statements. Translated: the defence uses what the Promoter has written, and the Promoter declares himself astonished. We are beyond paradox.
The Court of Cassation, meanwhile, does Cassation. And Diddi does Diddi.
While Diddi brings to Cassation the alphabet of personal offence, the Court of Cassation—in the other order, No. 25/25, adopted on the same day—reconstructs the facts, recalls the rules and marks out the terms: it explains that the Office of the Promoter, in 2023, lodged an appeal attaching the closing submissions, and that the Court of Appealfound a lack of specificity of the grounds; it then recounts the appeal in cassation and finally declares the appeal inadmissible, rendering final the first-instance judgment in the acquittal part. This is the language of law, which does not ask for applause and does not seek compassion. And here lies the most embarrassing aspect: on one side a judging body reasoning in terms of peremptory time limits, specificity of grounds, limits of appeals; on the other a Promoter of Justice who files papers in which the problem becomes his “bitterness”, his “suffering”, the “insinuations about my person”, the “climate of serenity” that would have been lost “certainly not through any fault of my own.”
In a normal legal order it would have been unthinkable
A Promoter of Justice is not a wounded protagonist. He is not a defendant of reputation. He is not a party seeking emotional protection. He is an organ exercising a public function, in the name of the State, and his credibility lies in sobriety, impersonality, distance from procedural narcissism. Here, instead, one reads the opposite: the institution bent to character, the role confused with ego, the procedure perceived as an affront. And the result is an act which—beyond the formulas—sounds like a plea: “look at what you are doing to me.” With Order No. 24/25, the Court of Cassation takes note of the abstention and effectively suspends the decision on the recusal, because the abstention renders that step superfluous. But the papers remain. And they remain as a photograph of a method: when the person who should represent the State of the Pope brings before a Panel composed predominantly of cardinals the category of “bitterness”, he is not merely getting the tone wrong. He is showing that he has not understood that the law is not his stage, and that a Promoter of Justice is not the star of the criminal trial. It is clear that, in the light of what is happening, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV will soon have to turn his hand to this office as well.
T.G.
Silere non possum