Woman close to Vatican cardinal arrested in corruption probe

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s swirling corruption investigation has taken a mysterious new twist with the arrest on an international warrant of a Sardinian woman said to be close to one of the Holy See’s most powerful cardinals before his downfall.

Italy’s financial police said Wednesday that Cecilia Marogna had been arrested in Milan late Tuesday on a warrant issued by the Vatican City State. An official of the Guardia di Finanza, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency had no further information since officers merely executed the warrant on behalf of a foreign country, the Vatican.

Italian newspapers in recent weeks have reported that Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the onetime No. 2 in the Vatican secretariat of state, had wired hundreds of thousands of euros in Holy See funds to Marogna’s Slovenian-based consulting firm, purportedly for humanitarian operations in Africa and Asia.

The reports, including interviews with Marogna herself, have identified the 39-year-old as a political analyst and intelligence expert who reached out to Becciu in 2015 with concerns about security for Vatican embassies in hotspots and was quickly brought into the cardinal’s inner circle.

Marogna told Corriere della Sera that over four years, Becciu wired her 500,000 euros as compensation, travel reimbursements and consultancy fees. She defended some luxury expenditures — designer pocketbooks for example — as being “maybe for the wife of a Nigerian friend who was in a position to talk to the president of Burkina Faso.”

Becciu, who was sacked by Pope Francis last month after admitting he sent 100,000 euros in Vatican money to a charity headed by his brother, has insisted that his dealings with Marogna were legitimate.

In an Oct. 7 statement issued by his...