Editor’s Note: The editor of Silere Non Possum, the Italian blog which often publishes the news of scandals at the Vatican, is to be prosecuted for defamation in the Vatican’s Tribunal, according to media reports received by the editor. In the article above he protests, that the Vatican penal code requires that the accused be notified of the charges before the press receives notice, and that as a resident in the territory of the Republic of Italy, charges be brought, not at the Vatican but in Italian territory.

However, this may be, it is  not clear to me that everyone knew who the editor of Silere Non Possum was.

His name is now known– Marco Felipe Perfetti — and he turns out to be a Lawyer at Rome, who while remarking that the Vatican prosecutor has no academic degree in Law at the Vatican or in Italian territory, often himself comments on Church affairs though he has apparently no academic degree or training in Ecclesiastical Affairs.

Perfetti was notorious in recent years for saying Pope Benedict XVI validly abdicated, and ridiculing those who held a different position, a thing which as a lawyer he should have at least been discrete enough to admit that it might have be outside his competence to discern. Nevertheless, there is no problem, because his new website, which is by no means a blog, has removed all his past articles on the controversy, and begun a new fresh presentation, obviously at some expense. — Legally this is a smart move, since no one can easily sustain a suit against him for past defamation if the articles in which it appeared have disappeared from the web. And this is perhaps because Silere Non Possum is now published by an Association, not by Perfetti personally, for such a move allows the Association to proceed forward without the baggage of past liability issues.

Nevertheless, ironically, he is now being sued for defamation for ostensibly revealing the scandal of the Rupnik affair, step by step, at Rome. This is another case of those, who said the antipope was always the pope, being eaten by the crocodile they protected.

UPDATE:

This report by The Pillar, again, like the previous one regarding the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, makes it appear that the Cardinal Vicar sought to defend Rupnik, even though he was strongly in favor of the investigation. Also, The Pillar, I think errs in calling Perfetti a journalist, since in Italy, to be a journalist, one has to be inscribed in the Order of Journalists and get an official license.

However, it is true, that if you publish news daily, you are a journalist by the original meaning of the word. However, if you call your journal, “I cannot be silent”, which in Latin is, Silere non possum, you are inviting your readers to presume that you may be involved in defamation, by definition, since defamation occurs when the facts about a person, which are private, are published, to the detriment of his public reputation.