VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast
Jun 16, 2012
Another week, another set of Vatican leaks. Barbie Latza Nadeau on how the Holy See’s spinmeister is coping with allegations of a disappeared hacker and a ‘pathological’ banker.
It’s been more than three weeks since the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested for allegedly stealing secret documents from the papal desk, and the details spilling from Vatican City are as murky as smoke from burning incense.
The heavily filtered “facts” of Gabriele’s arrest are channeled from the hallowed Holy See through sporadic press briefings held by Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s Jesuit spokesman, who sits at an expansive high table above reporters in the blue velvet press room inside the Holy See Press Center. The briefings often contain sarcastic micro-sermons on the interpretation of truth among the Vatican press corps, and Father Lombardi generally begins the Q&A sessions by wielding press clippings of what he considers the biggest offenses when it comes to accurate reporting. “There is a way of doing journalism that does not reflect the reality of the actual situation,” he lectured last week. “I am constantly amazed.”
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