The Pope’s personal assistant passed confidential papers to an Italian journalist after seeing “evil and corruption everywhere in the Church”, according to the examining judge in the Vatileaks investigation.
In a 35-page report, Judge Piero Bonnet said Paolo Gabriele — who has been charged with “aggravated theft” — felt sure Pope Benedict was not aware of what was going on.
“I was certain that a shock, even in the media, could be healthy in putting the Church back on the right track,” Gabriele was quoted as saying.
Gabriele also claimed he felt “infiltrated” by the Holy Spirit and had discussed with a spiritual director his concerns about the Church and his thoughts on taking the documents.
In fact, the judge said, the priest (identified only by the letter B) affirmed that Gabriele had given him a box full of documents, which the priest told Vatican investigators he burned because he knew “they were the fruit of an act that was not legitimate” and because he feared they would be stolen from his residence which had been burgled a few months earlier.
Many of the documents were the same as those featured in a television programme by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi and later published in a book by him. Most dealt with allegations of corruption, abuse of power and a lack of financial transparency at the Vatican.
Gabriele — who will turn 46 on August 19 — told investigators how he met Nuzzi in an apartment near the Vatican and described in detail the measures he and Nuzzi took to avoid detection.
Along with Gabriele, a computer technician at the Vatican Secretariat of State, Claudio Sciarpelleti, has been charged with the lesser offence of “aiding and abetting” him.
The formal indictment of the two Vatican employees is “not the last word” in the ongoing investigation into the Vatileaks scandal, according to Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi.
Sources:
Image: Welt Online
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