VATICAN CITY — Prosecutors asked a Vatican tribunal on Monday to absolve one journalist and give a suspended, one-year sentence to another for publishing books based on confidential Vatican documents exposing greed, mismanagement, and corruption in the highest echelons of the Catholic Church.

In their closing arguments, prosecutors also asked the Vatican tribunal to convict a flamboyant PR executive, a Vatican monsignor, and his secretary for having formed a ‘‘criminal association’’ with the aim of divulging confidential information.

Defense attorneys were to give closing statements Tuesday with a final ruling due Wednesday.

Italian journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi wrote blockbuster books last year based on Vatican documentation exposing the greed of bishops and cardinals lusting after big apartments, the extraordinarily high costs of getting a candidate made a saint, and the loss to the Holy See of millions of euros in rental income because of undervalued real estate.

The two journalists were put on trial, amid outcry by media watchdog groups, on charges they published confidential documentation acquired by a papal reform commission. Prosecutors on Monday said they were guilty of a ‘‘moral conspiracy’’ to divulge the news. Prosecutors Gian Pietro Milano and Roberto Zannotti asked that Nuzzi receive a one-year suspended sentence. They asked that Fittipaldi be absolved on the grounds there wasn’t sufficient proof that he was part of the alleged conspiracy.

The longest sentence sought — three years and nine months — was for PR executive Francesca Chaouqui, who gave birth to a baby boy last month as the trial was wrapping up. Of her proposed sentence, Chaouqui said: ‘‘How shameful.’’

Chaouqui; Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda, the commission’s No. 2; and Vallejo’s secretary were charged with forming a criminal organization and conspiring to divulge secret information.

Associated Press