ITALY
The Daily Beast
May 24, 2012
A massive information dump nicknamed ‘VatiLeaks’ has the Catholic Church sweating. Barbie Latza Nadeau talks to Gianluigi Nuzzi, the journalist exposing Pope Benedict XVI’s internal memos.
Investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi first met “Maria” in the spring of 2011 at a secret rendezvous in an unfurnished apartment under the shadow of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. He had been summoned there by secret Vatican insiders who had vetted him for weeks through banal meetings in coffee houses and cocktail bars. They followed him, checked out his friends, even set up false appointments just to observe him. When they finally trusted him, he met the informers who would betray the Catholic Church like no one before. In a massive document dump that has been dubbed “VatiLeaks,” Nuzzi managed to shed light on an institution that has been enshrined in secrecy for centuries.
For a year Nuzzi was a conduit for sensitive documents that surfaced from deep within the Roman Curia which he highlighted in his Italian television show The Untouchables. This week, he published the documents in full in a book called Sua Santita’- Le Carte Segrete di Benedetto XVI or Your Holiness: The Secret Papers Benedict XVI. He says he kept the documents on a USB key sewn into his neckties and he worried constantly that someone might try to harm him or steal them back.
Since his first television program, VatiLeaks has made a major impact in Rome. The reopening of the criminal investigation into the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee who disappeared 30 years ago, has come to symbolize the VatiLeaks scandal and a small victory for transparency in the Roman Catholic Church. And earlier this month, the Holy See conceded to allow the opening of the tomb of a notorious mobster who was interred inside a Vatican church in an unprecedented act of cooperation with Italian police who want to find the truth in the Orlandi case. “The people who provided these documents did it because they’d had enough of the lies,” Nuzzi told The Daily Beast. “They did it at great risk, and if they are ever found out, they will likely disappear without a trace.”
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