The Butler Did It

By Mark V. Serrano
PowerTrip
May 31, 2012

http://www.markserrano.com/index.php/the-butler-did-it/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-butler-did-it


Cronyism, corruption and power struggles. Where else would you find such things, along with palace intrigue and a butler leaking sensitive information, but the Vatican?

A book just published in Italy references private letters, internal memos, and a treasure trove of secret information that includes pleas to the Pope to deal with a money-laundering scandal.

Such scandals seem to abound in the church hierarchy. Ironically, we see countless examples of Catholic bishops and cardinals let off the hook for hiding serial sex offenders in the church, but if you steal the church’s money or reveal secrets from inside the Pope’s own Vatican apartment, it’s time to call in the hounds!

The Pope’s butler has been arrested as the Julian Assange of the Vatican, and will likely rot in an Italian jail for many years. Supposedly, he is the one who leaked all the juicy data to the author of the book, which is flying off the shelves in Italy.

This sort of tale is not unusual, of course. Stories have leaked recently about the fate of a teenaged girl with Vatican City citizenship who was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1983 in lieu of the release of the man who attempted to assassinate John Paul II (see: What is the Vatican’s sinister secret behind teenager Emanuela Orlandi’s 1983 disappearance?).

She was never found, and now the diamond-encrusted tomb of a known Italian mobster has been excavated based on a tip that the girl’s remains are also in the tomb. Authorities are now examining bones that do not belong to the mobster. One can just imagine Vatican officials symbolically washing their hands of the matter despite the fact that they may have known all along about the fate of this teenager who had just left her flute lesson when she went missing.

Then there was the purported murder-suicide in 1998 of the head of the Vatican Swiss Guard, his wife, and one of his officers. The Vatican covered-up the details, and claimed the officer was sick and killed his commanding officer and his wife for being passed-over for a medal of honor.

Numerous books have been written about the cover-up, with some suggesting that the Vatican had them killed because the young officer was an East German spy in the 1980’s. The mother of the young man requested a re-investigation by John Paul II for years but got no reply (see: Swiss to open murder inquiry into triple Vatican deaths – Cover-up allegations surrounding three killings involving the Pope’s Swiss Guards are finally to be heard in court).

In his letter of resignation as the chairman of the child protection committee set up by the U.S. bishops in 2002, former federal prosecutor and former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating referenced the church hierarchy as “la cosa nostra.” Keating’s letter was a refreshing slap in the face to the bishops, merely a year after he agreed to chair the committee hand-picked by the bishops (see: Head of Abuse Panel Blasts Church’s ‘Code of Silence’).

Secrecy has been enshrined in canon law and the rituals of the church hierarchy for centuries, so none of these scandals should come as a great surprise. In the hierarchy, secrecy is not a human failing but a duty to mother church to protect her from scandal.

Any organization which holds secrecy and cover-up as a guiding principle will be plagued by scandal. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!