Technician convicted in leak of papal documents

He gets two-month suspended sentence as scandal trials end.

VATICAN CITY — A Vatican court on Saturday convicted a computer technician of helping the former papal butler in the embarrassing leak of confidential papal documents and gave him a two-month suspended sentence in the last trial in the scandal.

Claudio Sciarpelletti, a 48-year-old Italian who is a computer program analyst in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, testified that he had played no role in helping to leak the documents, which later formed the core of an Italian journalist’s book alleging corruption in high ranks of the Vatican bureaucracy.

Last month, Paolo Gabriele, who served Pope Benedict XVI his meals and helped him dress for ceremonies, was convicted in a separate trial for the theft of the documents from the papal apartment and is serving an 18-month prison sentence in Vatican City.

Gabriele and Sciarpelletti are the only Vatican employees to be formally investigated in the case, which distressed the pope, embarrassed the Vatican hierarchy and left many wondering about the competence of the Holy See’s security apparatus.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters after the verdict that the probe into the leak “isn’t closed,” but gave no indication of whether any other suspects existed. Lombardi said it was un- clear if Sciarpelletti will keep his Vatican job. The defendant was ordered to pay court costs of a few thousand dollars, Lombardi said.

Sciarpelletti was convicted of aiding and abetting Gabriele by giving conflicting statements to Vatican investigators about an envelope found in his desk, addressed to Gabriele.

Judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre cited Sciarpelletti’s long years of service at the Vatican while suspending the sentence and ordering the criminal conviction not to appear on his record.