ROME
National Catholic Reporter
Jun. 04, 2012
By John L Allen Jr
In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” the narrator yearns for a “surcease of sorrow” for his lost Lenore. It’s an apt allusion to open a report on the Vatican these days, gripped by scandals surrounding leaked documents, the abrupt firing of a Vatican Bank president once hailed as a great reformer, and the arrest of the pope’s butler.
In Italian, the presumed gang of insiders behind the leaks is known as corvi, which can be translated either as “crows” or “ravens.”
“The events of recent days involving the Curia and my collaborators have brought sadness to my heart,” Pope Benedict XVI said at the end of his general audience May 30 — and thus, presumably, looking for some surcease himself. It was the first time the pope spoke publicly of the events.
Depending on whom one asks, the authors of the present chaos may be:
•Courageous whistle-blowers, determined to bring secrets to light;
•Petty bureaucrats, waging tawdry turf wars;
•Admirers of Benedict who believe the current regime around the pope must go, willing to destroy the village in order to save it.
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