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The Vatican is labelling as “deplorable” articles in two Italian newspapers claiming corruption, blackmail and sexual intrigue among Vatican cardinals.
“If in the past, the so-called powers, i.e., States, exerted pressures on the election of the Pope, today there is an attempt to do this through public opinion,” read a statement from the Vatican Secretariat of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
“It is deplorable that as we draw closer to the time of the beginning of the Conclave and the Cardinal electors will be held in conscience and before God, to freely indicate their choice, that there be a widespread distribution of often unverified, unverifiable or completely false news stories, that cause serious damage to persons and institutions,” the statement said.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi dismissed the newspaper articles as “gossip, disinformation and sometimes calumny” the reports, which are linked to an investigation by a committee of cardinals last year over a series of damaging leaks of confidential papal documents.
The stories in question have focused on individual cardinals linked to sex-abuse scandals, but the major headache comes from claims that Benedict’s resignation is linked to a special dossier prepared by a trio of cardinals appointed by the pope last year to investigate the papal letter-leaking scandal known as Vatileaks.
The left-leaning daily la Repubblica asserted that the cardinals’ report revealed how laymen had blackmailed Vatican officials to whom they had links of a “worldly nature.”
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