I worked alone, says Vatican man
ROME: The man at the centre of the VatiLeaks scandal said yesterday that no accomplices helped him in taking and leaking confidential papal papers that caused serious embarrassment at the Holy See on release.
Paolo Gabriele, Pope Benedict’s former butler, was asked to confirm as much during the trial in which he stands accused of aggravated theft.
“Yes, I can in the most absolute terms,” he said.
He pleaded innocent to the theft charges, but said: “I feel guilty of having betrayed the trust that the Holy Father, whom I love as a son, had placed in me.”
Vatican police arrested Gabriele after they found a stash of papal papers in his Vatican City home. In all, police carted off 82 boxes of papers, though not all of them were papal correspondence.
Prosecutors have said Gabriele confessed to leaking copies of the documents because he wanted to expose the “evil and corruption” in the church. They quoted him as saying that he knew taking the documents was wrong, but felt inspired by the Holy Spirit “to bring the church back on the right track”.
“I believed that the Holy Father wasn’t being correctly informed about certain things,” they quoted him as saying. “I was compelled also by my profound faith and desire that there should be light shed on everything in the church.”
The trial opened at the weekend inside the groundfloor tribunal in the Vatican’s courthouse behind St Peter’s Basilica. Judge Giuseppe Della Torre has said he expected it to be over in about four more hearings. Gabriele faced four years in prison if convicted on a charge of aggravated theft.
The 46-year-old father of three seemed calm in the first hearing, staring ahead impassively as his lawyer raised objections and requests.
On the opposite wall from where he sat was a photo of Benedict, his boss and the victim of the crime, but also the supreme judge in the case.
As an absolute monarch, Benedict has full judicial authority in the Vatican city state and can intervene to stop a trial. He delegates that power to the threejudge tribunal, but he can pardon Gabriele and most expect he will if there’s a conviction.
In its first hearing, the court released the list of witnesses who will testify in the case, though it’s not clear who among them might take the stand after Gabriele yesterday.
They include the pope’s private secretary, Georg Gaenswein, and one of the four consecrated women who care for the papal household, Cristina Cernetti.
Their testimony could shed light on the otherwise deeply private world of the small “papal family” who live, eat and pray together with the 85year-old pope every day.
Gaenswein, Cernetti and the rest of the papal entourage returned to Rome on Monday after spending the summer in the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. – Sapa-dpa--AP