VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press
By FRANCES D’EMILIO, Associated Press
VATICAN CITY (AP) — A Vatican court on Saturday convicted a Holy See computer technician of helping the former papal butler in the embarrassing leak of confidential papal documents and gave him a two-month suspended sentence in the last trial in the scandal.
Claudio Sciarpelletti, a 48-year-old Italian who is a computer program analyst in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, testified that he had played no role in helping to leak the documents, which later formed the core of an Italian journalist’s book alleging corruption in high ranks of the Vatican bureaucracy.
Last month, Paolo Gabriele, who served Pope Benedict XVI his meals and helped him dress for ceremonies, was convicted in a separate trial for the theft of the documents from the papal apartment and is serving an 18-month prison sentence in Vatican City.
Gabriele and Sciarpelletti are the only Vatican employees to be formally investigated in the case, which distressed the pope, embarrassed the Vatican hierarchy and left many wondering about the competence of the Holy See’s security apparatus.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.