VATICAN CITY
Times of India
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 Santita (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.
This week, 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.
For Valerio Gigante, a vaticanologist at the Adista religious news website, the church is suffering a moral crisis. “The contradiction at the heart of the church grows greater all the time. It exists for moral reasons but also generates huge amounts of money and is ever more occupied with political and economic power,” he said.
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