Italy’s Top Court Voids Vatican Bank Warrants

Italy’s highest court Friday threw out arrest warrants for U.S.-born Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus and two other Vatican bank officials charged in the nation’s worst post-World War II banking scandal.

“I am satisfied that the court allowed the appeal proposed by the defense,” said Adolfo Gatti, the lawyer who represented the Vatican in a five-month legal battle that strained relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian government.

“My faith in Italian justice has been restored,” Marcinkus said in a telephone interview from his Vatican office.

Italian authorities had charged Marcinkus, president of the bank, and Luigi Mennini and Pellegrino De Strobel, two lay officials, with being accessories to fraudulent bankruptcy in the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.

Italian authorities cannot appeal the final decision by the Court of Cassation.

The ruling means Marcinkus and the two officials may now leave Vatican City without risking arrest. Marcinkus has lived in a Vatican apartment, although people have reported seeing the 65-year-old native of Cicero, Ill., in the Rome area since Milan magistrates issued the warrants on Feb. 20.

Vatican lawyers appealed the Italian charges, claiming the warrants were invalid because the three were members of a “central entity” of the Vatican. They argued that under a Vatican-Italy treaty, the Vatican is not subject to interference from any Italian authority.

The court granted the appeal, voiding the arrest warrants.

All three men had maintained their innocence.

Prosecutors won’t make any decision about continuing the investigation until after the court releases a detailed explanation of its ruling, the AGI news agency quoted Milan prosecutor Pier Luigi Dell’Orso as saying.

AGI quoted Pio Ciprotti, a justice on one of the Vatican’s own courts, as saying, “This is a positive fact that is of comfort to us.”

Relations with the church grew tense when the government made its unprecedented attempt to extradite the Vatican officials. Pope John Paul II and U.S. bishops rallied behind Marcinkus. Italian newspapers generally supported the magistrates.

The Vatican, a sovereign state, has no extradition treaty with any country.