The car was pulled over and closely inspected in France, the man behind the wheel and his accomplice are now behind bars

Sep 17, 2014 12:04 GMT  ·  By

This past weekend, on Sunday, authorities in France had the shock of a lifetime when they came across quite a lot of cocaine and marijuana hidden inside a car belonging to Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia, now an emeritus librarian at the Holy See.

The find was announced this past Tuesday and is now making headlines. Needless to say, this is probably because a Vatican librarian's car is the last place where anyone would ever expect to find drugs, especially cocaine.

How the drugs ended up hidden inside the car

It is understood that, although the car involved in this incident does in fact belong to Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia, the Vatican librarian was not in any way involved in the smuggling attempt. Thus, the scheme was engineered by two Italian men.

Media reports say that, for the time being, the 91-year-old Cardinal is recovering from a heart attack. Sometime last week, his private secretary asked the two Italian men to take his car for its annual checkup.

Rather than simply driving the vehicle to the nearest service, have it checked and then return it to the Vatican emeritus librarian, the men, aged 30 and 41, used it to drive all the way to Spain, where they bought the cocaine and the weed.

While on their way back to Italy, they got pulled over in France, and authorities here found that they were carrying more than a change of clothes and one or two sets of castanets. The men were arrested on the spot, and are still in police custody.

Information shared with the public by the officers in charge of investigating this case says that, all in all, 9 pounds (a little over 4 kilograms) of cocaine and 7 ounces (nearly 200 grams) of marijuana were recovered from Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia's car.

By the looks of it, the two men thought that, simply by driving a car bearing diplomatic plates affiliated with the Holy See, they would somehow become immune to suspicion. Unfortunately for them, their plan backfired in the worst possible way.

The Vatican's reaction to this incident

Since Pope Francis considers drugs downright evil and has many times spoken against the legalization of marijuana, it really should not come as a surprise that, following this incident, the Vatican was quick to stress that Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia had nothing to do with the smuggling.

“Cardinal Mejia is not well and obviously has nothing to do with this. It’s now up to the police to pursue their investigations,” Vatican spokesperson Federico Lombardi told the press in an interview, as cited by The Telegraph. Federica Lombardi also pointed out that, since the two men are Italian, there was no need for people to point the finger at the Holy See.