VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Given intense interest in the arrest of a papal butler charged with being at least one of the moles responsible for the Vatican leaks scandal, I’ll list below the five most common questions I’ve fielded, along with my best stab at a response.
1. Who is this guy?
Paolo Gabriele is a 46-year-old Italian layman, with a wife and three children, who’s worked in the papal apartment since 1998. Gabriele was hired by the personal secretary of Pope John Paul II, Stanislaw Dziwisz, today the cardinal of Krakow. Gabriele’s role was mostly to see to the pope’s clothing, to serve his meals, and to be on hand for other personal needs. He performed the same functions for John Paul and Benedict when they were on the road, travelling on the papal plane.
As such, Gabriele was one of just a handful of people who enjoy direct daily access to the pope, along with Benedict’s two priest-secretaries and the four consecrated lay women belonging to the Memores Domini community who do most of the cooking and cleaning. Benedict XVI, who puts great emphasis on fostering a family spirit among his closest aides, would doubtless see Gabriele as a member of his personal family.
Gabriele, known around the Vatican as “Paoletto” (“little Paul”), has the reputation of being a devout and fairly simple person, not someone who would ordinarily be suspected of involvement in high intrigue.
2. What’s the evidence against him?
Officials familiar with the case say it’s almost a slam-dunk, given that a search of Gabriele’s Vatican apartment turned up stacks of confidential documents along with equipment for making reproductions. Because the Vatican doesn’t have a jail, Gabriele has been detained in one of three secure rooms in the offices of the Vatican gendarmes, a space more often used to accommodate pick-pockets arrested for fleecing the large crowds of tourists on Vatican grounds before they’re turned over to Italian authorities.
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