In an official note, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints refutes the broadcast of RAI’s “Report.” In a service broadcast on Monday, April 12, journalist Giorgio Mottola reported the complaint of Nicola Giampaolo, former Postulator of the Cause of Beatification of Aldo Moro, Christian Democratic statesman that the Red Brigade abducted and killed in 1978. Giampaolo said he received a request for money to open the Cause. The accusation is addressed to the Under-Secretary, Father Boguslaw Turek.
The Cause that Doesn’t Exist
Read, in the Congregation’s clarifications, dated April 9, and then evidently sent to “Report” before the broadcasting of the service, is the following: “In the Congregation there is no Cause for Beatification regarding the Honourable Aldo Moro. Consequently, this Dicastery never ratified Mr Nicola Giampaolo as Postulator of the Cause in question.
The Accuser Was No Longer Postulator
In the month of April of 2018 this Congregation was informed that the promoters of the Cause of the Honourable Moro had autonomously revoked Giampaolo’s mandate of Postulator for the diocesan phase, taking steps to appoint a new one. To be noted, therefore, is that the alleged financial request could not be advanced to Giampaolo in June of 2018, as he asserts, in as much as he was no longer the Postulator.
The note clarifies that in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints there is no form of accreditation of Postulators, as Giampaolo writes in his Curriculum.”
The Under-Secretary’s Defense
From his side, Father Turek addressed a letter to the Service’s author, which we report fully:
Dear Doctor Giorgio Mottola, I hereby refer to the accusation of Mr Nicola Giampaolo about the financial request that I would have made to him to open the Cause of Beatification of the Italian statesman Aldo Moro.
First of all, I wish to clarify that I learned of Mr Nicola Giampaolo’s affirmations only on Wednesday, April 7 when I read his e-mail in the office. In regard to the accusation formulated by the mentioned Mr Nicola Giampaolo I want to confirm to you what I said during the brief meeting that we had in the sacristy of a church on Easter Day: what he affirmed is not true. I met Mr Nicola Giampaolo in the offices of the Congregation to talk about his appointment as Postulator in the Roman phase of two Causes, not regarding that of the Honourable Aldo Moro.
On that occasion, as is my duty as Under-Secretary, I presented and explained to him courteously the reasons that led the Dicastery’s Ordinary Congress (a collegial organ that deliberates on questions regarding Causes) not to ratify the appointment for the two mentioned Causes because of the lack of requirements requested by the canonical norms.
I never treated or had anything to do with Aldo Moro’s Cause, also because up to now it has not been presented in the Dicastery. In fact, the Vicariate of Rome, to which the request was made to open the related diocesan process, did not address the Dicastery to ask for authorization to initiate the Cause.
Wishing you good work, I send you my greetings.
Father Boguslaw Turek, CSMA
The Current Postulator
The Postulator, since 2018, is Dominican Father Gianni Festa. Moro was, in fact, a Dominican tertiary. In an interview with “Vatican News” in July of that year, Father Festa affirmed that the diocesan course of the Cause was still in the initial phase. The process of the Cause, however, seems quite tormented, to the point that Moro’s daughter, Maria Fida, wrote in May 2019 to Pope Francis to ask him “to interrupt the process of Beatification of my father Aldo Moro unless it is not possible to bring it back in the legal tracks of ecclesiastical norms. “
