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A Vatican appeals court overturned the conviction in a landmark fraud case involving a senior Catholic cardinal. Angelo Becciu is appealing a five-and-a-half year jail term.A Vatican appeals court on Tuesday declared a partial mistrial in the case that led to a jail sentence against a senior Catholic cardinal for the misappropriation of Church funds for a property deal in the United Kingdom. The court said the judgment against Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, over a botched London real estate deal worth around 200 million pounds (around €230 million or $265 million at today's exchange rates), was flawed because of procedural errors by prosecutors and by former Pope Francis. Becciu had been the most senior Church official ever to stand trial before a Vatican criminal court, and his 2023 conviction and five-and-a-half-year jail sentence was hailed as evidence of the tiny city state's ability to hold its powerful religious leaders to legal account. Why did the appeals court declare a partial mistrial? The court said that prosecutors failed to share the full case files with defendants and their legal teams, and also improperly redacted some items, depriving the defense of due process. "It shows that from the first moment, we were right to raise the violation of the right to defense and to request that the law be respected to have a fair trial," Becciu's lawyers Fabio Viglione and Maria Concetta Marzo said in a statement. The court also ruled that one of then-Pope Francis' decrees, which allowed prosecutors to proceed without a preliminary judge overseeing their work, ultimately amounted to a new law. However, it said that Francis' failure to publish the decree meant that it was void and not in legal effect when implemented. This ruling could throw other rulings that used the same decree as a basis for the case into question. "The historic decision by the Court of Appeals — which, for the first time in Vatican history, ruled that a papal rescript was invalid and void due to failure to publish it — in our view results in the complete nullity of the entire investigation and trial," attorneys Massimo Bassi and Cataldo Intrieri, who represent former Vatican official Fabrizio Tirabassi, said in a statement. They added that they anticipated a swift acquittal at retrial. The tribunal, headed by Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, ordered prosecutors to deposit all the documentation, "in their original form," by April 30. It gave the defense until June 15 to prepare their motions before the June 22 start of the new trial. What was the original case about? The two-and-a-half-year case with some 86 hearings revolved in large part around the botched Vatican purchase of the 60 Sloane Avenue property in London's upmarket Chelsea district, via a fund run by financier Raffaele Mincione, which judges said in the original trial was hugely risky. The Vatican ultimately lost €140 million or more on the deal, according to prosecutors. Eight other defendants were also convicted by the Vatican tribunal in December on a range of charges. All deny wrongdoing and are pursuing appeals. The case shone a partial light on the Holy See's murky finances, which Francis had sought to clean up after taking the helm of the Catholic Church in 2013. Francis' Vatican claimed that some of the losses dipped into resources intended for charity. It also exposed infighting and intrigue high in the Church's hierarchy and revealed other scandals like papal ransom payments to Islamist militants and espionage activities. Who is Cardinal Angelo Becciu? Giovanni Angelo Becciu, 77, was second in command at the Vatican's administrative and diplomatic department, the Secretariat of State, at the time the deal went through in 2013. He was once seen as a frontrunner to be a future pope. Born in Sardinia, he became an archbishop in 2001 and was appointed as a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2018, barely two years before he would ask for Becciu's resignation as a Prefect and the renunciation of his privileges as a cardinal amid the fraud allegations. Current Pope Leo XIV, who is a canon lawyer, met with judges and prosecutors who oversee the Vatican legal apparatus as recently as Saturday to open the new judicial year. In his remarks he spoke of justice as a means of fostering unity in the Church, which some interpreted as an oblique reference to Becciu's case and the reputational damage to the Holy See in its handling of the prosecution. "The observance of procedural safeguards, the impartiality of the judge, the effectiveness of the right of defense and the reasonable duration of proceedings are not merely technical instruments of the judicial process," Leo said. "They constitute the conditions through which the exercise of the judicial function acquires particular authority and contributes to institutional stability." Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko