...The lawyers of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, Enrico Crasso, Raffaele Mincione, and Fabrizio Tirabassi filed a motion to recuse the Promoter of Justice Alessandro Diddi...
...The motion was admitted and, as provided by the Vatican Code of Criminal Procedure, the decision will rest with the Court of Cassation. In line with Article 42, Diddi could have chosen to recuse himself without waiting for the Court’s ruling, since “the president, the judges of the court or tribunal, and the single judge, when they know there exists a ground for recusal, even if not raised, have the duty to abstain.” Article 45 further clarifies that “the judge challenged may abstain even before the ruling.” The legal issue primarily concerns Article 42, paragraph 2, which refers to reasons of appropriateness not expressly listed in Article 43, where only four cases of recusal applicable to the Promoter of Justice are specified. Among them, point 3 – enmity – could likely apply, given Diddi’s conduct, perceived in court as stemming from personal hostility. The essential elements of the recusal motion are to be found in the chats filed in court and published in full, exclusively by Silere non possum, in which Genoveffa Ciferri exchanges frequent messages with the Roman lawyer Diddi and with Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, who goes so far as to claim she “speaks with the magistrates” and can intercede for Alberto Perlasca.
When asked by the president of the Court, Mons. Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, how he intended to proceed, Diddi reacted with what those present described as an “embarrassing performance.” Instead of simply referring the matter to his colleagues, as would happen in any rule-of-law state, he declared: “Finally I have the chance to defend myself from a series of insinuations. I thank the defense teams for this initiative. I want to use the three days granted to express my considerations calmly, in order to dispel the doubts that have arisen in these months regarding the conduct of the investigation… For now I believe it is proper to leave the hearing, since there are no urgent activities to be carried out. I’m going back to the office.”
At 9:36 a.m., Diddi left the courtroom. The move was deemed unjustified, since although he could not perform procedural acts at this stage, he should have remained present. The episode recalls other incidents from his career, such as when, as an Italian lawyer in Calabria, he walked out of a courtroom...