Pope pardons ex-butler who stole his papers
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI granted his former butler a Christmas pardon Saturday, forgiving him in person during a jailhouse meeting for stealing and leaking his private papers in one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times.
After the 15-minute meeting, Paolo Gabriele was freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lives with his wife and three children.
The Vatican said he couldn’t continue living or working in the Vatican, but it would find him housing and a job elsewhere soon.
“This is a paternal gesture toward someone with whom the pope for many years shared daily life,” according to a statement from the Vatican secretariat of state.
The pardon closes a painful and embarrassing chapter for the Vatican, capping a sensational, Hollywood-like scandal that exposed power struggles and intrigue in the highest levels of the Catholic Church.
Gabriele, 46, was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found what they called an “enormous” stash of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment.
He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal on Oct. 6 and has been serving his 18month sentence in the Vatican police barracks.
He told Vatican investigators he gave the documents to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the 85-year-old pope wasn’t being informed of the “evil and corruption” in the Vatican and thought that exposing it publicly would put the church back on the right track.
The papal pardon had been widely expected before Christmas, and the jailhouse meeting Benedict used to personally deliver it recalled the image of Pope John Paul II visiting Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot him in 1981, while he served his sentence in an Italian prison.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the meeting was “intense” and “personal” and said that during it Benedict “communicated to him in person that he had accepted his request for pardon, commuting his sentence.”
Lombardi said the Vatican hoped the Benedict’s pardon and Gabriele’s freedom would allow the Holy See to return to work “in an atmosphere of serenity.”
A Vatican computer expert, Claudio Sciarpelletti, was convicted Nov. 10 of aiding and abetting Gabriele. His two-month sentence was suspended. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said a pardon was expected for him as well. He recently returned to work in the Vatican.
Benedict met this past week with the cardinals who investigated the origins of the leaks, but it wasn’t known whether they provided him with any further updates or were merely meeting ahead of the expected pardon for Gabriele.