VATICAN CITY
ABC News

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
VATICAN CITY February 21, 2013 (AP)

In one of his last appointments, the pope on Friday transferred a top official from the Vatican’s secretariat of state to Colombia amid swirling media speculation about the contents of a confidential report into the Vatican’s leaks scandal.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed the transfer of Monsignor Ettore Balestrero had been months in the works, was an important promotion and had nothing to do with what the Vatican considers baseless reporting.

Balestrero was named undersecretary of the Vatican’s Foreign Ministry in 2009 and, among other tasks, has been a lead player in the Holy See’s efforts to get on the “white list” of financially transparent countries. Pope Benedict XVI, who steps down Feb. 28, named him ambassador, or nunzio, to Colombia.

Italian newspapers for days have been rife with unsourced…