VATICAN CITY, (Reuters) – The Vatican yesterday ordered Pope Benedict’s former butler to stand trial for leaking documents alleging corruption in the Holy See, revealing the involvement of a second Vatican employee and details of secret nocturnal meetings with a reporter.
A complex 35-page document on a scandal which has rocked the Holy See since butler Paolo Gabriele was arrested last May showed that the butler saw himself as an “infiltrator” of the Holy Spirit who wanted to clean up the Roman Catholic Church.
The indictment, which could lead to the most spectacular trial in the Vatican in 40 years, said computer expert Claudio Sciarpelletti would also stand trial on lesser charges of aiding and abetting a crime.
Sciarpelletti, who worked in the Vatican’s most important office – the Secretariat of State – was a close friend of Gabriele and investigators found a sealed envelope in his desk containing material published in a book based on the leaks.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi downplayed Sciarpelletti’s role, saying he had spent only one night in jail in May and had been suspended from his job but not fired. If convicted, he would get “a light sentence,” Lombardi said.
He said the investigation was only partially closed and would continue for “other people who appear to be involved in these crimes.”
The long indictment offered clues to Gabriele’s motives and state of mind.
He told investigators he had acted because he saw “evil and corruption everywhere in the Church” and wanted to help root it out “because the pope was not sufficiently informed”.
In another section he was quoted as telling investigators that after he started copying documents and leaking them, “I reached the point of no return and could not control myself any more”.
He continued: “I was always interested in intelligence and in a way I thought that in the Church this role belonged to the Holy Spirit, and in a certain sense I saw myself as its infiltrator.”
