VATICAN CITY (Reuters)- Paolo Gabriele was always a reserved, almost shy man, as his position requi red. He had access to the most private rooms in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace – Pope Benedict’s apartment.
But what could have prompted the pope’s butler, who was formally charged by Vatican magistrates yesterday with illegal possession of secret documents, to betray the man who trusted him?
Was it money? Probably not. Gianluigi Nuzzi, the Italian journalist who revealed some of the leaked documents alleging corruption in the Vatican and internal conflict over the role of the Vatican bank, declines to reveal his sources but insists he gave no money to them.
Nuzzi, a respected journalist with a good track record whose book “His Holiness” contains some of the allegations, says those who gave him the documents were devout people “genuinely concerned about the Catholic Church” who wanted to expose corruption.
The 46-year-old Gabriele, facing up to 30 years in prison if convicted, lives in a comfortable apartment in the Vatican with his wife and three children, and is said by all who knew him to be very religious.
While Vatican employees do not receive large salaries, they do enjoy benefits such as low rent, no income tax, and cheap food and petrol at the commissaries of the 108-acre city-state.
On papal flights, the handsome, clean-cut Gabriele rarely came into the press section. When he did, he was polite to journalists but resisted any attempt to squeeze information out of him.
A priest who knows Gabriele told the newspaper La Stampa yesterday that he was “a man of simplicity” who would not have been able to organise a campaign of leaks.
“Why would he risk the good family life he built?” the priest, who was not identified, told the newspaper’s Vatican affairs writer, author Andrea Tornielli.
Indeed, as in any good mystery, the question on many people’s minds is: What was the motive?
If the whistleblower really is the man who helped the pope dress, served his meals, and rode next to the driver of the ‘popemobile’ in St Peter’s Square, could he have done it on his own?
