The material is distributed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. From Mariano Tomatis.
With many thanks for Mariano in giving me permission to reproduce his excellent researches!
On 5 December 1911 Saunière did not appear in the Courtroom to which he was summoned. The judge draws up a long sentence that opens with a summary of the events that kicked off the second trial:
By an interlocutory judgment of 5 November 1910, the Court of the Church of Carcassonne had instructed Mr Bérenger Saunière to communicate to his ordinary person the accounts of the works he had carried out in Rennes-le-Château by means of supporting documents and to receive instructions from his ordinary man with regard to the works carried out with the help of the tenders collected.
Mr. Saunière had declared through his prosecutor that he had been able to collect large sums because he had spread his intention to found a retreat house for elderly or sick priests, or a pious work for which he had to canonically account to his bishop.
Monsignor the Bishop appointed a commission to examine Mr. Saunière's accounts. According to the committee's report, Mr Saunière acknowledges that he has received considerable sums, but does not present any supporting documents. For the expenses, Mr. Saunière presents supporting documents for CHF 36,000, when the amount of the expenses was CHF 190,000. Mr. Saunière does not make any proposals about the use to be made of the constructions carried out.In the absence of the accused, the Court – in the persons of the Diocesan Judge Gustave Cantegril, the Canon Messal and Don Padriès – expresses itself as follows:
Having regard to the report presented to Bishop by the commission responsible for examining the accounts of the priest Bérenger Saunière;
Considering that the priest Bérenger Saunière requested from the faithful, without having the mandate, funds for pious works, as is apparent from the process of 5 November 1910;
Considering that the proceeds of these requests had a private purpose which the priest Bérenger Saunière, in his rank, was not free to bear;
Considering that he had to dedicate them, in his view, to the embellishment of the church and the construction of a retreat house for elderly or sick priests;
Considering that it is public notoriety that, if the priest Bérenger Saunière has consecrated certain sums to the restoration work in his church, he has never carried out the work for which he mainly requested funds; [...]
Considering that [...] it is not found there that the 200 thousand francs or so that he had collected were spent since it is not justified that about 36 thousand francs of expenses that, if the priest Bérenger Saunière could usefully use a part of the funds received for the church and for Calvary, he spent the rest on very expensive constructions without any utility or any relationship with the purpose he said he was pursuing;
Considering that, in the words of the priest Bérenger Saunière and from the minutes of the committee, it appears that the buildings that would represent the sums spent are not even owned by him because they were built on land which he claimed did not belong to him;
Considering that by saying this he forever compromised the destination of the sums he had solicited and received [...]
Bérenger Saunière is guilty of dilapidation and diversion of the funds of which he was the depositary [...]
We condemn the priest Bérenger Saunière to a suspension in divinis for a term of three months from the day of notification of this judgment, which will continue, moreover, until he has returned the assets diverted by him into the hands of those in law and according to the canonical forms.
This sentence, being brought in absentia, is without appeal.1
Although the suspension a divinis has a theoretical term of three months in the case of Saunière it remains in action until he returns the stolen assets to the Church, in reality the punishment has all the air of being definitive: it is the Court itself that affirms, in the sentence, that Saunière "has forever compromised the destination of the sums it had solicited and received"; since all the land is in the hands of Marie Denarnaud, it will be impossible for him to allocate them to the use announced in the first letters sent to the bishop – that of a retirement home for elderly priests.
1. Reproduced in Jacques Rivière, Le fabuleux trésor de Rennes-le-Château, Bélisane, Nice 1983, pp. 243-249 here translated by Advent Child.