VATICAN CITY
AFP
VATICAN CITY — A verdict was expected Saturday in the trial of a Vatican computer technician accused of helping Pope Benedict XVI’s butler leak confidential papers.
Claudio Sciarpelletti’s trial comes just weeks after the disgraced former butler, Paolo Gabriele, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for engineering the leak of secret papal documents.
Sciarpelletti, 48, has worked for the past 20 years in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State — effectively the government of the Roman Catholic Church — and was responsible for maintenance on all the computers of Vatican employees.
The leaks, which were published in a book by an Italian journalist, revealed infighting in the highest echelons of the Catholic Church and allegations of fraud in the running of the Vatican, the world’s smallest state.
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