VATICAN CITY
The Independent (United Kingdom)
Michael Day
Saturday 29 September 2012
Rarely if ever in recent history can one person be said to have played so many roles in a single court case. The individual in question is Pope Benedict XVI, who will be the supreme judge, the victim, and according to the accused, the intended beneficiary in the Vatican leaks trial that begins this morning at the Holy See.
Benedict’s former butler, 46-year-old father-of-three Paolo Gabriele, is accused of stealing sensitive documents and passing them on to a journalist whose subsequent book and TV programmes appeared to lift the lid on tawdry back-stabbing and corruption at the Vatican.
Today’s trial will take place in the Vatican courtroom, employing a 19th-century penal code in place in Italy when the Vatican state came into being. The Pontiff himself will not be present. But a panel of three judges, headed by Giuseppe Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, has the power to send Mr Gabriele to an Italian prison for four years if the accused is found guilty of aggravated theft. The only other person on trial is Claudio Sciarpelletti, a 48-year-old Vatican computer expert, who faces charges of having helped Mr Gabriele.
Reinforcing Vatican claims that Mr Gabriele was a light-fingered rogue employee are the additional charges that he stole gifts intended for the Pontiff including a gold nugget, a 16th-century copy of The Aeneid and a cheque made out to Benedict for €100,000. Before his arrest, however, on 23 May this year, Mr Gabriele, with his face hidden from the camera, told the reporter Gianluigi Nuzzi that there were “at least” another active 20 whistle-blowers at the Vatican seeking to expose corruption.
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