Vatican Court found the Pope’s butler Paolo Gabriele, the guilty of grand larceny for smuggling outside the Sacred Apartments some classified documents revealing secrets on functioning of the Papal Curia.
Paolo Gabriele, nicknamed ‘The Crow’ by the press, claimed to having acted ‘only out of visceral love for the Church of Christ and Her visible Chief’.
The court itself recognized in the sentence, Mr. Gabriele ‘acted out of love for the Church and the Pope, although on wrong assumptions’.
What did Gabriele mean ?
He could not explain that in open Court, but it is widely assumed, he was trying to hit what he considered a corrupt faction in the Roman Curia, headed by State Secretary Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
Gabriele was sentenced to 18 months in Gendarmerie Headquarters (police and security force, of Vatican City) for “aggravated theft” of confidential documents.
The State Secretary is a key figure in the Vatican, second only to the Pope (an office somewhere between a prime minister and a minister of foreign affairs).
A State Secretary plotting against the Pope would be something worth of a Dan Brown novel.
But could this be real?
Was Cardinal Bertone suspected of being a plotter or simply of being incompetent for the position, which was a concern voiced also by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.
According to Wikileaks , the U.S. diplomatic personnel described Cardinal Bertone as a ‘yes-man… and able to speak only Italian’. -Whatever the latter meant (?)
The court heard Monsignor Carlo Maria Polvani head of the documentation service of Secretariat of State, and his nephew Vatican envoy to Washington and former governor of the Vatican City , who complained in leaked letters to the Pope that he was being hounded out for stamping out fraud.
Polvani said it was “unthinkable” he would give confidential documents, adding he was “shocked” by the rumors against him and even was accused of being “a fan of Che Guevara”.
Sciarpelletti first claimed he knew Gabriele only in passing, but it turned out the two communicated frequently and saw each other – with their families – socially as well as at work and then said Gabriele gave him an envelope “a couple years ago,” asking him to read it and let him know what he thought.
The next day, he said that the envelope was given to him by someone identified as “W,” and he was supposed to pass it on to Gabriele.
The contrasting version of facts by Claudio Sciarpelletti hindered the investigation, however, charges were reduced to “aiding and abetting,” which is the closest the Vatican has to an accusation of being an accessory after the fact.
Gabriele made headlines around the world, and newspapers carried photographs of him on duty, but Sciarpelletti is not known publicly.
Rarely if ever in recent history can one person be said to have played so many roles in a single court case.
The individual :
Pope Benedict XVI, who will be the Supreme Judge, the Victim, and according to the accused – the Intended Beneficiary in the VatiLeaks trial at the Holy See.
Benedict’s former butler was convicted of stealing the sensitive documents and passing them on to a journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, who devoted an entire section of his book to the increasing prominence and alleged overreach of the Gendarmerie .
The subsequent book and TV program appeared to lift the lid on back-stabbing and corruption and portrays the Vatican as a hotbed of jealousy, intrigue and underhanded factional fighting.
Under the leadership of Domenico Giani, a former member of the Italian Secret Service, the Gendarmerie Corps has significantly expanded its capabilities, joining Interpol in 2008 and investing heavily in technology.
Traditionally, most of Vatican law was based on Italian law, though in recent years has increasingly diverged from Rome.
After the Vatican’s Gendarmerie investigate and arrest, if a case is not handed over to the Italians, it is generally handled by the Vatican’s judicial system.
When Italian Police searched Gabriele’s apartment , following the publication of several confidential letters in Nuzzi’s controversial book , they discovered approximately 1,000 incriminating documents and 82 boxes of evidence.
During the week-long trial, the judges heard how Gabriele stolen copies included personal documents sent between the Pope and various cardinals, encrypted communications from Papal Ambassadors across the world.
The book reveals details of the Pope’s personal finances, and includes tales of bribes made to procure an audience with him.
Some papers ere marked by the Pope with “to be destroyed” in German.
Over the following months the situation widened as documents were leaked to Italian journalists, uncovering power struggles inside the Vatican in its efforts to show greater financial transparency and comply with international norms to fight money laundering.
In early 2012, an anonymous letter made the headlines for its warning of a death threat against Pope Benedict XVI.
This system is necessarily small – a single judge who has limited jurisdiction , a three-judge tribunal that deals with more serious crimes, a four-member court of appeals and a supreme court that contains three cardinals.
The Pope is not be present, but a panel of three judges, headed by Giuseppe Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, who could send Gabriele to an Italian prison for 4 years if found guilty.
The Vatican’s small size presents problems when imprisoning criminals, upon becoming independent in 1929, it opened a prison with just three cells, but rarely used, it was converted to a food warehouse.
Since then, prisoners have been held in the Gendarmerie headquarters.
The only other person on trial, Claudio Sciarpelletti, a computer expert, who helped Gabriele was given a suspended sentence of two months.
During a 15-minute meeting in the Vatican police barracks, Pope Benedict XVI met his former butler, Paolo Gabriele, and told him he was forgiven and pardoned.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the pope had wanted “to confirm his forgiveness and to inform him personally of his acceptance of Mr. Gabriele’s request for pardon.”
The Vatican described the pope’s visit and pardon as “a paternal gesture toward a person with whom the pope shared a relationship of daily familiarity for many years.”
Gabriele was allowed to return home the same day; he had been in the Vatican police barracks almost two months after being found guilty of aggravated theft leaking private Vatican documents and Papal correspondence.
Gabriele, 46, worked in the papal apartments for 6 yrs and was barred from further employment at the Vatican.
He, his wife and three young children have been living in a Vatican apartment but moved, now that he is no longer employed by the Vatican.
Gabriele’s wife, Manuela Citti, told the newspaper, Il Messaggero, the clemency filled her with joy.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Gabriele’s crime caused damage to the Pope and universal church.
His actions also “violated the right to privacy of many people; created prejudice against the Holy See and its different institutions; created an obstacle between the communications of the world’s bishops and the Holy See; and caused scandal to the community of the faithful,” he wrote.
The scandal first came to light in January 2012 on a television program in Italy called The Untouchables (Gli intoccabili), and escalated when Nuzzi published a book consisting of the confidential letters and memos with letters written to the Pope and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, by the current Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, complaining of corruption in Vatican finances and a campaign of defamation against him and begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions due to higher contract prices.
However, John L. Allen Jr. suggests Viganò’s transfer could have been about personality rather than policy.
“[T]his would not seem to be a courageous whistle-blower who’s trying to expose wrong-doing or prompt reform.
The motives seem more personal and political.”According to Allen, none of the information leaked seem “especially fatal“.
Though an anonymous document described a conversation with Cardinal Romeo of Palermo, Sicily, in which he allegedly predicted the Pope would be dead within 12 months – which suspected to be the real reason the Pope retired.
“It’s not so much the content of the leaks, but the fact of them, which is the real problem“
In March 2012, Pope Benedict appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the leaks.
Vatican probes into the leaks worked several tracks, Vatican magistrates pursuing the criminal investigation and an administrative probe – three cardinals acted in a supervisory role, looking beyond the narrow criminal scope of the leaks to interview broadly across the Vatican bureaucracy; and uncovered a blackmail scandal.
They reported directly to the pope, and could both share information with Vatican prosecutors and receive information from them, according to Rev. Federico Lombardi.
The group was headed by Cardinal Julian Herranz, an Opus Dei prelate who headed the Vatican’s legal office, as well as the Disciplinary Commission of the Vatican.
Pope Benedict made his first direct comments on May 30, 2012, in remarks of his weekly general audience and stated “exaggerated” and “gratuitous” rumors offered a false image of the Holy See, and commenting “The events of recent days about the Curia and my collaborators have brought sadness in my heart…I want to renew my trust in and encouragement of my closest collaborators and all those who every day, with loyalty and a spirit of sacrifice and in silence, help me fulfill my ministry.”
In July, Pope Benedict held a meeting of the commission of cardinals, in attendance, were the head of the Vatican Police, judges involved in the case, and representatives of the Vatican Secretariat of State, according to a report.
The Vatican’s judge, was instructed to examine the evidence of the case and decide whether there is sufficient material to proceed to trial.
Paolo Gabriele was indicted by Vatican magistrates on August 13 for aggravated theft, Gabriele’s trial began on October 2, 2012.
He claimed to have stolen the documents to fight “evil and corruption” and put the Vatican “back on track“.
Multiple evaluations of Gabriele’s mental health provided conflicting results:
concluding in one report that, Gabriele suffered from a “fragile personality with paranoid tendencies covering profound personal insecurity“; yet another report found that Gabriele showed no adequate signs of a major psychological disorder nor posing any serious threat to himself or others.
Paolo Gabriele was found guilty of theft, and was sentenced 18 months and ordered to pay legal expenses.
However, Gabriele served his sentence in the Vatican itself, as opposed to the usual arrangement of sending prisoners an Italian prison.
Claudio Sciarpelletti, computer specialist at the Secretariat of State who helped Gabriele, was convicted of obstruction of justice based on conflicting information he gave to prosecutors.
He was sentenced to 4months, which was amended to 2 months suspended with 5 years probation due to his long years of service and lack of criminal record.
The VatiLeaks scandal marred Benedict XVI’s last year as Pope, embarrassed the church, exposed the dysfunction of Vatican bureaucracy, and destroyed the career of the butler convicted for leaking the pontiff’s personals correspondence.
But it has been very good for an Italian reporter and publisher.
As the Vatican reeled and the pope’s butler sat in jail,and Gianluigi Nuzzi became something of a celebrity in Italy.
As part of the roll-out for the English translation of his blockbuster book, “His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Pope Benedict XVI,” Nuzzi has appeared as the hero of a GQ story about the butler, and now writes for the Italian Vanity Fair.
He has become a familiar Vatican pundit on Italian television and Twitter, where he often directs vitriol at Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone.
On a recent afternoon, Nuzzi, dressed in a sharp black three-piece suit and three-quarter coat, arrived late to a panel discussion for a friend’s book.
Only about 20 people attended the event, most of them friends or family of the book’s author, who had worked with Nuzzi on his now defunct TV program.
Clearly the main attraction, Nuzzi spoke with conviction in a nighttime baritone, accused the Vatican of being stuck in time and attacked the church for subjecting those who denounced their practices to “psychological analysis.”
At the end of the presentation, Giuseppe Rusconi, a self-described “Vaticanista,” as the Vatican reporters are known, raised his voice.
Before Nuzzi became the go-to guy for Vatican document dumps — his previous book, “Vaticano SpA,” revealed many of the secret accounts of the Vatican bank — he worked as an investigative political reporter for right-leaning publications owned by the family of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Suspicion that Berlusconi handed Nuzzi the embarrassing wiretapped conversations between the mogul’s political enemies, which the reporter published in 2006, led Milan prosecutors to investigate him.
Nuzzi’s books are put out by the publishing house Chiarelettere, which also has a 16 percent stake in Il Fatto Quotidiano.
“Chiarelettere substituted for what the newspapers and television should have been doing,” said Lorenzo Fazio, the director of Chiarelettere.
One of the reasons listed for the dismissal of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi as head of the Vatican bank was the “Failure to provide any formal explanation for the dissemination of documents last known to be in the president’s possession.”
December 2012 , the Pope received a report on “Vatican lobbies” prepared by cardinals Julián Herranz, Salvatore De Giorgi, former Archbishop of Palermo, and Jozef Tomko.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, speaking on Vatican Radio in February 2013, strongly criticized media coverage of the report as a financial scandal which purportedly became, upon the cardinals’ internal investigation, a blackmail scandal as well.
Although the dossier was available only to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the investigators themselves, the latter were free to discuss the results of their investigation ,the dossier itself was to have been given to Benedict’s successor as Pope, Francis.
It was reported that leaked notes of a private conversation between Pope Francis and Catholic officials at the Latin American Conference of Religious (CLAR) confirmed the existence of “a stream of corruption”, and it is true, it is there … We need to see what we can do”. According to La Repubblica Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi made no comment on the remarks made in “a private meeting”.
The Vatican court acquitted the two journalists involved in the Vatileaks trial, citing freedom of expression as its reason.
Judge Giuseppe Della Torre, head of the tribunal of the Vatican City declared that “the court had no legitimate jurisdiction over Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipald.”
Msgr Lucio Balda, by contrast, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, in a cell within the confines of the Vatican.
Requests for a papal pardon for Msgr Balda have, so far, been met with silence.
Gabriele’s lawyer had told an Italian newspaper Gabriele had written “a confidential letter to the pope,” asking for his forgiveness and the Pope had acted alone.
Gabriele told investigators he had acted out of concern for the Pope, who he believed was not being fully informed about the corruption and careerism in the Vatican.
Father Lombardi also told reporters Claudio Sciarpelletti, computer technician in the Vatican Secretariat of State found guilty of obstructing the Gabriele investigation and was given a suspended sentence, and has returned to work in the Secretariat of State.
A full pardon also is expected for him.
According to the German Catholic agency KNA, Gabriele was offered a job doing clerical work for a new branch of the hospital near the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
He will also receive assistance with housing.