VATICAN CITY
PolicyMic
Areej Elahi-Siddiqui
The Vatican admitted to secretly carrying out wiretaps on the clergy within the Holy See on Thursday, stating they were part of the investigations into the Vatileaks scandal that rocked Rome last year.
Although the church holds that the surveillance, which was done to find if any other Vatican insiders were involved in helping Paolo Gabriele, the then-Pope’s butler who had stolen and leaked compromising papal documents to the media, was done on a very small scale, an Italian news magazine says otherwise.
According to Panorama magazine, Vatican authorities – with Tarcisio Bertone, the No. 2 at the Vatican in the lead – had not only tapped the phones but also read emails of Church emails to find more information about the Vatileaks scandal. Panorama’s journalist Ignazio Ingrao, said that “everyone was spied on in the Vatican” in efforts that seemed eerily like a “Vatican Big Brother.”
Panorama also added that this was “the biggest and most detailed wiretapping operation ever conducted in the sacred palaces was conducted.”
Panorama added that the wiretapping is ongoing now.
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