Greg Burke, assistant director of the Vatican press office, said two executives from Rome's Bambino Gesu Children's Hospital - former chairman Giuseppe Profiti and former treasurer Massimo Spina - are being investigated.

Profiti and Spina allegedly misappropriated hospital funds to pay for the restoration of Bertone's apartment.

Burke said Cardinal Bertone, who was secretary of state from 2006 to 2013 and briefly in charge of the Holy See and its administration when Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, was not under investigation.

In his book "Greed," journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi alleged that the cost of renovation was funneled through a London-based holding company run by Bertone's personal friend.

"The money destined for sick children was in actuality used for the renovations and then sent on to London," Fittipaldi wrote. "Bertone's name is not cited in the magistrates' document but the Holy See will find it hard to overlook his direct involvement in the scandal."

Bertone says he can prove he paid around $340,000 for the work out of his own pocket, but the foundation that raises money for the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesu children's hospital apparently also paid $455,000.

The massive-for-Rome apartment is being floored with 2,400 square feet of expensive herringbone oak parquet which cost the cardinal and the hospital $28,000.

A smaller 750-square-foot area is being covered with luxury white Carrara marble at a price tag of $11,000. The double-glaze energy efficient windows cost $80,000 and the front security door is priced at $6,000.

Sources

The Daily Beast
Catholic News Service
Religion News Service
Image: The Daily Beast

Chaouqui, a former member of an economic reform commission established by Pope Francis, is accused of conspiring with Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda to leak documents.

Vallejo Balda, who had sat on a top level papal commission overhauling the Holy See's finances, admitted giving confidential financial documents to journalists.

But he said he did so under duress having been effectively blackmailed by his female colleague.

Chaouqui, who is married, has categorically denied having sex with the cleric.

She implied that Vallejo Balda had confided in her about a previous gay encounter or relationship.

"He told me something in confidence, something he said only I knew," she wrote.

Chaouqui said the cleric's claims against her had made her decide to reveal what he had told her in court.

The prosecution claimed during the last court session on Tuesday that Chaouqui had sent the Spanish priest a WhatsApp message in which she warned: "I will destroy you in the press and you know I can do it."

He has also claimed that she led him to believe she had links to the Italian secret services and contacts with the mafia and powerful politicians.

The Holy See has been pursuing the prosecution of two investigative journalists, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, who have published books based on leaked documents.

Sources

AFP/Yahoo
Daily Mail
NanoNews
Image: AFP/Daily Mail

"Yes, I passed documents. I did it spontaneously, probably not fully lucid," said Monsignor Angelo Lucio Vallejo Balda during a Vatican City trial on Monday.

"I was convinced I was in a situation without exit," said Balda, former secretary of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs.

Balda is one of five people, including two journalists, who face up to eight years in jail, for breaking a Vatican law created by Pope Francis in 2013 criminalizing the leaking of documents.

The priest admitted passing material to journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi who both wrote books revealing widespread financial mismanagement in the Vatican.

Balda said he was under pressure from fellow defendant and member of the commission, Francesca Chaouqui, a 34-year-old PR expert.

He explained that he felt under pressure from Chaouqui who at one time he had been close to.

The priest said he believed Chaouqui mingled in a "dangerous world" of Italian power brokers.

Sources

The Guardian
AFP/Yahoo News
Catholic News Agency
The Tablet
Image: Getty Images/The Guardian

In reality it's one of the most serious security breaches in modern Vatican history.

But the real scandal is not the crime of the Butler.

The real scandal is what the leaked documents reveal: administrative chaos, lack of communication, financial mismanagement, intrigue, ambition and factional fighting at the highest level of the Roman Curia.

The culture which enabled the "Vatileaks" scandal to happen has been exposed. It's a ball of wool that's almost impossible to untangle - even by a pope. Something is very wrong inside the Vatican and its system. Plainly, we're talking of systemic dysfunctioning.

A bad system makes good people do bad things.

Cardinals outside the Vatican Curia have expressed their concerns. In June 2012 the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris called for "a reform of the Curia which is unsuitable for the present-day Church." A year earlier the Cardinal Archbishop of Austria said, "It is no secret that the Roman Curia is in urgent need of reform."

The Pope's last speeches have been loaded with words of warning against the very attitudes that have been exposed in the "Vatileaks" scandal.

Vatican observers have been quick to notice that Benedict's last morning in office will be spent with the three senior Cardinals who investigated the affair, and who have prepared a tell-all report on the issue. Many people may want to turn the page on this moment; but it seems that one of Benedict's last gestures will be to ensure that the book remains open until the inner workings of the Vatican can be reformed, root and branches.

Source

Fr Craig Larkin is a New Zealand priest who lives in Rome

It has all the makings of a Hollywood adaptation of a Dan Brown novel. Secrets of the Vatican exposed, documents stolen from the Pope's desk, rows and rivalries between cardinals, vast sums of money, the involvement of the cultish organisation Opus Dei. And then the so-called Vatileaks scandal, which has had Rome agog for months, went a bit Da Vinci Code-meets-Cluedo: the butler allegedly did it.

Paolo Gabriele, who has worked for Pope Benedict XVI as one of his most personal aides for six years, has now been charged and sent to trial by a Vatican judge for leaking papal documents, including papers containing allegations of corruption. Read more

Sources

• Catherine Pepinster in The Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: The Guardian

Finally, there is clarity. The Holy See has cleared things up and made the document accessible to all: a handout on checking whether apparitions of the Virgin Mary are authentic.

Everything will be much easier from now on. The Roman Catholic Church has taken a step forward.

This "breaking news" from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) reveals the kinds of issues the Vatican is concerned with — and the kind of world in which some there live. It's a world in which the official Church investigation of Virgin Mary sightings is carefully regulated while cardinals in the Roman Curia, the Vatican's administrative and judicial apparatus, wield power with absolutely no checks and the pope's private correspondence turns up in the desk drawers of a butler.

It's a completely different apparition of the Virgin Mary that has pulled the Vatican and the Catholic Church into a new crisis, whose end and impact can only be surmised: the appearance of a source in the heart of the Church, a conspiracy against the pope and a leak code-named "Maria."

Since the end of May, the pope's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, has been detained in a 35-square-meter (377-square-foot) cell at the Vatican, with a window but no TV. Using the code name "Maria," he allegedly smuggled faxes and letters out of the pope's private quarters. But it remains unclear who was directing him to do so. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: The Guardian