The Court of Prato condemns Francesco Spagnesi to return 123,000 euros to the parish of Castellina

The Court of Prato, with a sentence issued two months ago, condemned Francesco Spagnesi, former parish priest of Castellina, to compensate the parish of the Annunciation for the sums stolen from the parish coffers between 2019 and 2021, for a total amount of 123,180 euros, plus interest and legal costs.
Spagnesi was arrested in September 2021 and at the end of the criminal proceedings he then agreed to a sentence of 3 years and 8 months and a 14,000 euro fine for the crimes of drug dealing and trafficking, embezzlement and fraud against the faithful.
A parallel canonical proceeding, activated by the Diocese of Prato, led to the former priest’s reduction to lay status.
The then parish priest of Castellina, in the summer of 2021, together with his partner, ended up at the center of the investigation by the Prato Prosecutor’s Office for organized parties based on sex and drugs. A line of investigation to which was soon added that linked to the shortages from the parish coffers. Before the investigators, Spagnesi admitted unjustified withdrawals from bank accounts and diversion of the faithful’s offerings, aimed at having money to satisfy what had become a real drug addiction.

Following the outcome of the civil proceedings brought by the parish of Castellina – moved by the desire for truth and justice for an affair that has created dismay in the community and in the Diocese – the Court of Prato fully accepted the requests, brought forward through the lawyer Marco Antonio Vallini.
Judge Elena Moretti, in the sentence, underlined the “implementation by the subjects surrounding the parish priest of measures aimed at securing the parish accounts, which Spagnesi however voluntarily and knowingly put aside due to his conscious conduct”. The reference is to the requests for clarification formally made by the Parish Economic Affairs Council and by Spagnesi’s closest collaborators in the summer of 2020 in the face of the emergence of some anomalies, requests to which the then parish priest responded with false statements. In particular, the sentence notes that according to the current legislation the parish has the parish priest, at the time of the facts, Don Francesco Spagnesi, as its sole legal representative, and that therefore the people who helped him and the economic affairs council are “merely consultative subjects “, “without any organic identification with the parish”, who therefore cannot be accused of any co-responsibility in the negligent act, pursuant to article 1227 of the Civil Code, as Spagnesi had tried to request through the lawyer Paola Fedi.