Gossipy rumors have been mixed with more than a pinch of midsummer madness and served, stirred but not chilled, as a James Bond-like intrigue cocktail for Vatican conspiracy theorists who like to keep a glow on their paranoia.
The main ingredients are the leaked confidential papers of Pope Benedict XVI in an incident that has led to interpretations of such battles for influence inside the Curia that Der Spiegel claims that the “mood at the Vatican is apocalyptic.”
Turmoil has followed the arrest and imprisonment of papal valet, Paolo Gabriele, in a 377-square-foot cell, one window, no TV, that most people did not know lies deep in the Vatican maze, with the explanation that the butler did it, or, rather, the butler is taking the fall in a plot, code-named, honest to God, Maria, engineered by high-ranking officials to circulate papers damaging two close papal aides, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, and Benedict’s secretary from the old country, Monsignor Georg Ganswein. Despite deep-sixing the butler, the Dreyfuss of this comic opera, new documents have surfaced with the threat of more to come if Bertone and Ganswein are not forced out of their jobs. Read more
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