VATICAN CITY
The Irish Times
PADDY AGNEW in Rome
THREE DAYS after the sensational arrest of Pope Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, and four days after the dismissal of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of Vatican bank IOR, the Holy See remains in crisis.
In a climate that smells of a witch hunt, further arrests are predicted as Vatican police attempt to solve “Vatileaks”, the leaking of private documentation from the papal apartment.
In an audience with the Renewal in the Holy Spirit movement on Saturday, Pope Benedict appeared to make reference to the current difficulty when quoting St Matthew: “And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”
With the ex-butler Mr Gabriele still in detention (in a Vatican gendarmerie holding room, since there is no Vatican prison), those winds continue to blow. Furthermore, as the international clamour makes itself more manifest, there were all the indications powerful figures in the Holy See were busily engaged in a Stalinist-style rewrite of history.
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