Under-siege Vatican PM speaks for first time about Vatileaks

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Speaking for the first time on the topic of Vatileaks, the Vatican’s Secretary of State (Prime Minister), Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, told an Italian television interviewer that Pope Benedict is not overly worried by the scandal.

“He doesn’t allow himself to be frightened by attacks, of any sort, nor by the hard accumulation of prejudices,” Bertone said.

“I’d like to underline that Benedict XVI, as everybody knows, is a gentle man, of great faith and prayer. He is certainly not frightened by attacks of any kind,” he said.

Calling the attacks “ferocious, destructive, and organised,” Bertone disagrees with the assessment many hold that he is the subject of the Vatileaks attack. Rather, he said, they were an attack on the Pope himself, and those who work closely with him.

“What’s most sad in these events and these situations is the violation of the privacy of the Holy Father and his closest collaborators,” he said.

Bertone told RAI that despite the scandal, the pope’s collaborators were united behind him.

“Those who are near him and work by his side are sustained by the pope’s great moral force,” Bertone said, reading from notecards.

In what many interpret as a visible statement of Benedict’s trust in his ‘closest collaborator’, Bertone and the pope appeared side by side during during a three day visit to Milan to support the activity of the World Meeting of Families.

However also over the weekend is a sign the scandal may widen further. As reported in CathNews on Tuesday, Italian newspaper La Repubblica published new documents, received after the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, had been arrested and was in custody in the Vatican’s police station.

A note the La Repubblica daily said it had received anonymously stated that there were “hundreds more documents” and that Gabriele was just a fall guy.

Sources