VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider
A lay functionary under scrutiny: he could be arrested
Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City
Interrogations of the lay officials of the Secretariat of State, a hunt for the possible mastermind behind the infiltrators, internal ‘governance’ in anguish. Scandals even graver than this (such as the Calvi case) occurred in the Wotyla papcy, but today the media coverage is multiplied. Vatican investigators seek evidence, proof, and possible “higher level” accomplices, in fact, Vatican public prosecutor Nicola Picardi’s “initial investigation” has already been closed, and the phase of “formal investigation”, conducted by Judge Piero Antonio Bonnet, has already begun.
Yesterday the Pope mentioned the Gospel: “the wind shakes the House of God, but it does not fall”. No direct reference to the Vatileaks scandal, though the reference does mention clouds that are gathering of the skies of the present. The transition to the formal stage, said spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, has made it possible to officially release the name of the arrested individual; furthermore, it involves a real arrest to all effects, given that in the Vatican, the practice taking a suspect into “custody” does not exist. The investigation has been proceeding swiftly thanks to the fact that it’s entirely within the Vatican’s jurisdiction: Gabriele is a Vatican citizen, and lives next to the Gendarmerie, and it was in his home were the “confidential documents were discovered.” Full-court investigations, which don’t exclude “other acts”; for this reason, the length of the investigation could even lengthen. Again in the afternoon, Fr. Lombardi intervened to explain that “the judiciary has now charged Paolo Gabriele simply with the crime of aggravated theft: we are at a very early stage of criminal proceedings, therefore the high estimates regarding an eventual prison sentence printed by some newspapers have absolutely no justification”. A clarification with respect to some reports, according to which Gabriele would have been charged with crimes such as a violation of the correspondence of a head of state, and thus an attack on state security, with a penalty of up to 30 years in prison.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.