ROME
The Commentator
If you asked a tabloid journalist to concoct the juiciest ever story, he could hardly have done better. It involves corruption, priestly sex, a young temptress, women’s underwear and Silvio Berlusconi. The Pope will have a job on his hands managing this one
Tim Hedges
On 7 December 2015
Pope Francis has returned from a successful trip to central Africa to a veritable domestic storm. The press are calling it Vatileaks II. The first episode of this, you may remember, involved blackmail and some documents leaked by Pope Benedict’s butler.
I don’t suppose Francis has a butler, but the press is relishing the new scandal. Indeed if you asked a tabloid journalist to concoct the juiciest ever story, he could hardly have done better. It involves corruption, priestly sex, a young temptress, women’s underwear, and Silvio Berlusconi.
It began with two journalists, Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi, who have written books on financial waste in the Vatican. They managed a few juicy exposures, including how much you had to bribe officials to get someone made a saint, but nothing really meaty to establish an existential threat to the Church.
Indeed, this is the sort of stuff which should be grist to the mill of this reforming pope. Instead, the Vatican made a daft mistake. Rather than promising to clean out its own stables in a humble, Christian way, it used a law passed by Francis after the first Vatileaks, and issued arrest warrants for four people, including Fittipaldi and Nuzzi.
Arresting two journalists has of itself gone down badly in a country which prides itself on a free press. Politicians are already involving themselves and several have urged Prime Minister Renzi to make diplomatic representations to the Holy See, which of course is a separate country.
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