ROME - Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, a PR who is among the five suspects in the Vatileaks trial, said after a brief hearing that she is not hoping to receive a pardon from Pope Francis, since she is innocent of the charges levelled against her by the Vatican.

  "I am innocent and one doesn't pardon the innocent, one acquits them".

  Chaouqui is on trial alongside journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio.

  The trial opened last month and the second hearing last week, like Monday's, was quickly adjourned.

  Chaouqui, Balda and Maio are charged with leaking the confidential material and Nuzzi and Fittipaldi with using it in their two recently published books, which document alleged Vatican waste and mismanagement and lavish spending by clergymen.

  Chaouqui's defence lawyer, Laura Sgrò, confirmed that nobody has been interrogated so far, and said that only jurisdictional matters were discussed.

  "We are satisfied, our requests were accepted," she said, "the list of witnesses was allowed and also some experts were permitted".

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