VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)
The Pope has taken the unusual step of setting up an internal, criminal investigation to identify the source of damaging leaks of compromising Vatican documents.
By Nick Squires, Rome
1:50PM GMT 18 Mar 2012
The inquiry will seek to punish the insiders who leaked the papers, whom the Vatican hierarchy regard as “disloyal and cowardly”.
Pope Benedict XVI had been “hurt” by the leaks, said Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the Vatican’s deputy secretary of state and third most powerful Vatican figure, in an interview with L’Osservatore Romano, the city state’s daily newspaper.
Documents leaked to the Italian press over the last few weeks have shed light on dark power struggles between senior cardinals, alleged corruption and nepotism in the running of the Vatican administration, and a mysterious prediction that the 84-year-old pontiff would die within a year, possibly as a result of an assassination attempt.
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