ROME
Vatican Insider
Andrea Tornielli
Rome
Dear friends,
I have just finished reading “His Holiness, the secret files of Benedict XVI” which contains the ‘Vatileaks’, the documents and letters that an internal Vatican source gave to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi. As you know, yesterday the Holy See reacted harshly to this, defining the operation “a criminal act” and declaring its will to “take the necessary steps” with the help of the international community.
It is obvious and also understandable that the Vatican feels exasperated at the publication of messages, notes, memos, remarks and letters that had been written only a few months or in some cases a few weeks before. I am not sure what legal action can be taken against publication, but it seems obvious to me that the Holy See has an internal security problem and that the “criminal act” was carried out by someone working inside the Vatican, who may have access to the archives and who manages to intercept papers coming from the Pope, his secretary and the Secretary of State. This person has a precise objective, the details of which are still somewhat hazy. But the source of the problem is the mole’s identity.
From what I know the internal investigation into who was responsible for the leaks has not yet been successful. The three old cardinals in charge of the investigation (Herranz, Tomko and De Giorgi) have received the results of the work carried out by the Vatican Gendarmerie, but it seems that there are no specific leads, despite the fact that only a few people have had access to the documents going in and out of the Pope’s office and that of his secretary. As such, the creation of the committee, which was announced a month in advance by the Substitute to the Secretary of State, Becciu, and which was established on the 25 April, as well as yesterday’s statement seem to have the intent of discouraging further instances of this kind rather than investigating the current ones. But for the time being (more than three months since the first leaks came out) a solution seems to lie beyond the Vatican’s reach.
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