BishopAccountability.org

Pope to Meet with Cardinals Investigating Leaks

WTOP
June 16, 2012

http://www.wtop.com/220/2878731/Pope-to-meet-with-cardinals-investigating-leaks

Pope Benedict XVI waves as he arrives for an audience to followers of the Renewal In Spirit movement in St. Peter's square at the Vatican, Saturday, May 26, 2012. The Vatican has confirmed Saturday, May 26, 2012, that the pope's butler Paolo Gabriele was arrested in an embarrassing leaks scandal. Spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said Paolo Gabriele was arrested in his home inside Vatican City with secret documents in his possession. Gabriele, a layman, was being held. Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months have pointed to power struggles and accusations of corruption touching senior Vatican cardinals

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI is getting a briefing from the three cardinals he appointed in April to investigate a series of leaked Vatican documents that have cast the top governance of the Catholic Church in a poor light.

The cardinals were given a broad mandate to interview Vatican officials across the board to get to the bottom of the leaks and report back to the pope. They are working separately from a criminal probe headed by the pope's top bodyguard, a former Italian secret service agent who heads the Vatican police force.

So far only one person has been arrested in the case: the pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, a 46-year-old father of three who was arrested May 23 and accused of aggravated theft after reams of papal documents were found in his Vatican City apartment.

He is to undergo a new round of interrogation next week by the investigating judge after a week-long hiatus.

The Vatican said Saturday that Benedict would meet later in the day with the commission investigating the leaks. It is headed by one of the Vatican's top legal heavyweights: Cardinal Julian Herranz, an Opus Dei prelate who led the Vatican's legal office as well as the disciplinary commission of the Vatican bureaucracy before retiring.

The leaks scandal broke in January when Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi revealed letters from a former top Vatican administrator who begged the pope not to transfer him for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros (dollars) in higher contract prices. The prelate was transferred and is now the Vatican's U.S. ambassador.

The scandal widened over the following months with documents leaked to Italian journalists that laid bare power struggles inside the Vatican over its efforts to show greater financial transparency and comply with international norms to fight money laundering.

The scandal reached a peak last month when Nuzzi published an entire book based on a trove of new documentation, including personal correspondence to and from the pope and his private secretary, much of which painted the Vatican secretary of state in a negative light.




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