CHICAGO (IL)
The Telegraph
By MANYA A. BRACHEAR — Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Reams of private Vatican correspondence published in a new Italian best-seller reportedly include a plea by Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, urging the Vatican to halt an award to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn for abolishing the death penalty.
George appears to play a minor role in the real-life Vatican whodunit that the Italian press has dubbed “Vatileaks.” Last week, the pope’s butler was arrested on suspicions that he leaked private letters, including some addressed to Pope Benedict XVI. Those letters reportedly appear in “Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI,” a new book in which Italian writer Gianluigi Nuzzi airs a boatload of Vatican dirty laundry and hints of a real-life conspiracy akin to a Dan Brown novel.
According to Vatican expert John Allen, the book includes what Nuzzi claims is an encrypted 2011 cable from the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington relaying a plea from George to Benedict’s Secretary of State. George asks that the Vatican official step in and block the Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio from giving an award to Roman Catholic governor Quinn, Allen said.
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