Probe highlights Vatican legal system's limited protections

The case has highlighted the limitations of the Vatican law, which is based on an 1889 Italian code no longer in use and greatly curbs the rights of defendants during the investigative phase compared to modern legal systems.For instance, Francis authorized Vatican prosecutors to use a “summary rite” that allowed them to deviate from typical procedures, essentially giving them carte blanche to interrogate and conduct searches and seizures without oversight by an investigating judge, defense lawyers say.“It’s a phase that’s completely in the hands of the prosecutors,” said Laura Sgro, who has defended clients before the Vatican tribunal but is not involved in this case. And then there needs to be an accounting afterward, certainly, and an opportunity to contest things.”Kurt Martens, a canon lawyer who works in the Vatican’s other justice system for church crimes, was more blunt: “This is what you have in a banana republic.”Further complicating their defense, once a ruling is made, the accused have no recourse outside the Vatican system, since the Holy See isn’t a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which allows defendants to petition the European court in Strasbourg.Italian political affairs commentator Ernesto Galli della Loggia referred to the lack of safeguards in a recent front-page column in leading daily Corriere della Sera.“How is this compatible with the right of every person to know the accusations that are made against them, to know the motivations and have a just trial by independent judges?” he asked.