By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The defence at a Vatican corruption trial failed definitively on Tuesday to have charges against their clients dropped and the judge ordered it to begin in earnest with the questioning of a cardinal. Court President Giuseppe Pignatone issued a slew of rejections of defence motions and objections that had built up during the previous eight hearings of the trial, which began in July. It took Pignatone and an assistant judge bout 90 minutes to read the 40-page decision, explaining Pignatone’s reasons for rejecting the some two dozen defence motions. Pig…