VATICAN CITY
Belfast Telegraph
By Michael Day in Italy
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
The Vatican has long been said by those who know it to be a nest of vipers. But recently, the poison has been laid bare for everyone to see as leak after embarrassing leak has revealed an institution at war with itself.
Already this year we’ve read about documents warning of a “death threat” against the Pope, widespread nepotism and corruption, exiled whistle-blowers, gay smear campaigns and embarrassing revelations about the Vatican’s tax affairs. Most of the damaging of the “Vatileaks” were revealed by the reporter Gianluigi Nuzzi in a series of TV programmes and now his new book Sua Santità (Your Holiness).
As ever, lumbering several steps behind, the powers that be at the Holy See last month set out to catch the mole or moles behind the leaks – which they refer to as “criminal acts”. The Pope’s butler has already been nabbed in possession of some of the confidential papers. But few people think he acted alone.
Yesterday, we learnt that an unnamed Italian cardinal is now a suspect. But even if all the leakers are caught, few observers think that there’s an end in sight for the PR disasters that have blighted the reign of 85-year-old Pope Benedict XVI. The stately Vatican Insider website, for its part, blamed an intrusive modern media. “Scandals even graver than this (such as the Calvi case) occurred in the Wotyla papacy, but today the media coverage is multiplied,” it said.
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