VATICAN CITY
Chicago Tribune
Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
Reuters
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict is fighting the worst crisis of his papacy, but his problems are only the latest in a long history of controversies and intrigue in the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church.
The “Vatileaks” scandal, in which the pope’s private papers are alleged to have been pilfered by his own butler, pales in comparison to the scandals of centuries past when popes were accused of violence, nepotism and sexual excesses.
Pope Benedict has angrily charged that “totally gratuitous” accounts in the media “offer an image of the Holy See which does not correspond to reality.”
Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the third-ranking official in the world’s smallest state, bemoaned the “distorted image” presented of the Vatican and said the internal debates revealed by the documents were perfectly normal in any organization.
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