Cardinal Angelo Becciu testified at a Vatican trial on May 18 that Pope Francis ordered the ouster of Libero Milone, the Vatican’s auditor general, in 2017, “because Milone had hired an outside investigative firm to spy on Vatican hierarchs like himself,” in the words of the AP report.

Milone was the Holy See’s auditor-general from 2015 until his 2017 resignation. Milone and Becciu clashed during Milone’s tenure.

Cardinal Becciu oversaw the internal affairs of the Roman Curia as Substitute (Sostituto) of the Secretariat of State from 2011 to 2018. Pope Francis created him a cardinal in the 2018 consistory and named him Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. In 2020, Becciu resigned from the “rights connected to the cardinalate.”