VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post
By Nicole Winfield
VATICAN CITY (AP) – There’s something of a whodunit going on in the Vatican to discover who leaked Pope Francis’ environment encyclical to an Italian newsweekly, deflating the release of the most anticipated and feared papal document in recent times.
L’Espresso magazine published the full 191 pages of “Laudato Si” (Be Praised) on its website Monday, three days before the official launch. The Vatican said it was just a draft, but most media ran with it, given that it covered many of the same points Francis and his advisers have been making in the run-up to the release.
On Tuesday, the Vatican indefinitely suspended the press credentials of L’Espresso’s veteran Vatican correspondent, Sandro Magister, saying the publication had been “incorrect.” A letter from the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, to Magister advising him of the sanction was posted on the bulletin board of the Vatican press office.
Magister told The Associated Press that his editor, not he, obtained the document and decided to publish it.
“I just wrote the introduction,” Magister said in a text message, adding that he had promised the Vatican to keep quiet about the scoop
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