VATICAN CITY
The Independent (United Kingdom)
Michael Day
Milan
Saturday 26 May 2012
Vatican police yesterday seized Pope Benedict’s butler in connection with a series of embarrassing leaks on alleged corruption, infighting and mismanagement that have emerged about the Holy See over the past year.
The arrest of Paolo Gabriele came after the decision by the Pontiff last month to set up a special commission of cardinals to smoke out the mole responsible for the highly publicised revelations.
“The inquiry carried out by Vatican police… allowed them to identify someone in possession of confidential documents,” the Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told journalists. Senior officials had recently railed against leaking sensitive documents as “a criminal act”.
News of the papal butler’s arrest brought more drama to a week that has already seen the scandal-struck Vatican bank embroiled in fresh controversy. Rising tensions over plans to make the institution conform to international standards of transparency were blamed for Thursday’s sacking of its chief Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.
The respected financier was ousted after months of internal battles following his insistence on applying the anti-money laundering rules demanded by the European Commission. Mr Gotti Tedeschi, 67, an expert on financial ethics, was put in charge of the bank – also known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) – in 2009, specifically to clean-up its reputation.
His plan to introduce transparency was at first agreed by key figures at the Vatican, including the powerful secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. But when Mr Gotti Tedeschi insisted that the anti-corruption regulations should be retroactive, Cardinal Bertone and other key figures are thought to have turned against him.
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