Crucial to all this reporting has been the trail of hard evidence which international financial transactions inevitably leave, even if that trail appears to have been deliberately obscured much of the time.
While the current allegation against Cardinal Becciu may be the most overtly scandalous charge yet, it remains to be proven.
Many supporters of Cardinal Pell's Vatican reforming agenda have long noted with suspicion the convenient timing of his forced departure to Australia in 2017. Some will be tempted to treat the reported allegation that Becciu played a part in orchestrating Pell's legal ordeal as a final vindication of their previously sotto voce thesis. Certainly, they do not lack for colorful context.
CNA has reported that Becciu frequently clashed with Pell as the Australian cardinal sought to bring Pope Francis's financial reforms into force, and there is no shortage of Vatican anecdotes concerning Becciu's willingness to undermine his opponents by any means he thought necessary.
Also in 2017, Becciu was responsible for the public defenestration of the Holy See's first auditor general, Libero Milone, whom Becciu accused of "spying" on his personal finances – an allegation that now appears to reflect rather better on Milone than it does on Becciu.
In his role at the Secretariat of State, Becciu certainly seems to have had considerable latitude over use of Vatican funds, often to questionable ends.
It could be said that Becciu does not lack for means, motive, and opportunity to have done what is claimed. But Pell's more clear-eyed allies will be acutely aware that – so far – nothing has been proven, and the current media attention being given to the allegations against Becciu does not mean it inevitably will be.
Vatican prosecutors have, so far, appeared to enjoy a remarkably free hand to pursue the evidence wherever it leads them. Sooner, rather than later, it seems likely that evidence will lead them, Cardinal Becciu, and several others into a courtroom. That will, most likely, be the first time and place that the full extent of the accusations against Becciu, and the evidence supporting them, is laid bare in public.
As the Holy See works to weather the financial fallout of years of apparent financial mismanagement, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, it has taken important steps to boost both its credibility and transparency in recent weeks and months.
By coincidence, on the Monday after Becciu's sacking Moneyval, the Council of Europe's anti money laundering watchdog arrived in Vatican City for a planned onsite inspection.
Also by coincidence, the last time they came to town was in 2017, the year both Pell and Milone left. In the report they issued after that visit, Moneyval concluded: "The overall effectiveness of the Holy See's engagement with combating money laundering depends on the results that are achieved by the prosecution and the courts."
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That which was true then is likely to be even more so now.
Some progress has been made in flagging cases for investigation and prosecution in the Vatican. What remains to be seen is if those investigations and prosecutions can be turned into successful convictions.
Until then, nothing can be taken for granted.
Ed Condon is a canon lawyer and worked as Catholic News Agency's Washington DC editor until December 2020.