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The Butler Did It? Pope’s Personal Butler Arrested in Leaked Documents Scandal

May. 26, 2012 12:17pm Madeleine Morgenstern

Vatican Confirms Popes Personal Butler Paolo Gabriele Arrested in Leaked Documents Scandal

Paolo Gabriele (bottom), the pope's butler, travels withPope Benedict XVI on April 18, 2012. Gabriele was arrested after secret documents were found in his apartment. (Image source: AFP)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican confirmed on Saturday that the pope’s butler has been arrested in its embarrassing leaks scandal, adding a Hollywood twist to a sordid tale of power struggles, intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of Catholic Church governance.

Paolo Gabriele, a layman and member of the papal household, was arrested Wednesday after secret documents were found in his Vatican City apartment and was continuing to be held Saturday, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said in a statement.

Gabriele is often seen by Pope Benedict XVI’s side in public, riding in the front seat of his open-air jeep during Wednesday general audiences or shielding the pontiff from the rain. He has been the pope’s personal butler since 2006, one of the few members of the small papal household that also includes the pontiff’s private secretaries and four consecrated women who care for the papal apartment.

His arrest followed another stunning development at the Vatican this week, the ouster of the president of the Vatican bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, by his board. Sources close to the investigation said he, too, was found to have leaked documents, though the official reason for his ouster was that he simply failed to do his job.

The “Vatileaks” scandal has seriously embarrassed the Vatican at a time during which it is trying to show the world financial community that it has turned a page and shed its reputation as a scandal plagued tax haven.

Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months have undermined that effort, alleging corruption in Vatican finance as well as internal bickering over the Holy See’s efforts to show more transparency in its financial operations. But perhaps most critically, the leaks have seemed aimed at one main goal: to discredit Pope Benedict XVI’s No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state.

The scandal took on even greater weight last week with the publication of “His Holiness,” a book which reproduced confidential letters and memos to and from Benedict and his personal secretary. The Vatican called the book “criminal” and vowed to take legal action against the author, publisher, and whoever leaked the documents.

The Vatican had already warned of legal action against the author, Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, after he broadcast letters in January from the former No. 2 Vatican administrator to the pope in which he begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros in higher contract prices. The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican’s U.S. ambassador.

Nuzzi, author of “Vatican SpA,” a 2009 volume laying out shady dealings of the Vatican bank based on leaked documents, said he was approached by sources inside the Vatican with the trove of new documents, most of them of fairly recent vintage and many of them painting Bertone in a negative light.

Bertone, 77, had no diplomatic experience when, after Benedict’s election, he took over the high-profile job as the main administrator of the Vatican and its external relations. He had long been Benedict’s loyal deputy as a canon lawyer at the Vatican’s orthodoxy office.

But he has been blamed for a series of gaffes that have plagued Benedict’s papacy and, according to the leaked documents, generated a not inconsiderable amount of ill will directed at him from other Vatican officials.

“For some time and in various parts of the church, criticism even by the faithful has been growing about the lack of coordination and confusion that reign at its center,” Cardinal Paolo Sardi, the former No. 2 official in the Vatican secretariat of state, wrote to the pope in 2009, according to the letter reproduced in “His Holiness.”

At a news conference this week, Nuzzi defended the publication of the book and said he wasn’t afraid of Vatican retaliation. In fact, he even taunted Vatican prosecutors to seek help from Italian magistrates to investigate the case, charging that it would be a remarkable turnaround, given that the Vatican has been less than helpful in the past when Italian prosecutors came asking for information for their investigations.

He praised his sources – and said there were several – in his acknowledgments, writing: “They risked their jobs, loves, lives to entrust their big and little secrets.”

Nuzzi had no comment Saturday about the arrest.

Lombardi said Saturday the arrest of Gabriele was a sad development for all Vatican staff. “Everyone knows him in the Vatican, and there’s certainly surprise and pain, and great affection for his beloved family,” Lombardi said.

Lombardi said Gabriele had met with his two lawyers and that the Vatican judicial system was taking its investigative course. He hasn’t been indicted.

The Vatican has taken the leaks very seriously, with Benedict appointing a commission of cardinals to investigate. Vatican gendarmes as well as prosecutors are also investigating the sources of the leaks.

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Comments (107)

WhatDoYouKnowJoe
Posted on May 28, 2012 at 11:50pm
I. Scripture Alone Disproves “Scripture Alone”

Gen. to Rev. – Scripture never says that Scripture is the sole infallible authority for God’s Word. Scripture also mandates the use of tradition. This fact alone disproves sola Scriptura.

Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:15 – those that preached the Gospel to all creation but did not write the Gospel were not less obedient to Jesus, or their teachings less important.

Matt. 28:20 – “observe ALL I have commanded,” but, as we see in John 20:30; 21:25, not ALL Jesus taught is in Scripture. So there must be things outside of Scripture that we must observe. This disproves “Bible alone” theology.

Mark 16:15 – Jesus commands the apostles to “preach,” not write, and only three apostles wrote. The others who did not write were not less faithful to Jesus, because Jesus gave them no directive to write. There is no evidence in the Bible or elsewhere that Jesus intended the Bible to be sole authority of the Christian faith.

Luke 1:1-4 – Luke acknowledges that the faithful have already received the teachings of Christ, and is writing his Gospel only so that they “realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.” Luke writes to verify the oral tradition they already received.

John 20:30; 21:25 – Jesus did many other things not written in the Scriptures. These have been preserved through the oral apostolic tradition and they are equally a part of the Deposit of Faith.

Acts 8:30-31; Heb. 5:12 – these verses show that w

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fromo1946
Posted on May 28, 2012 at 3:20pm
That’s great, they’re quick to jail the butler, but not the child molesters…there’s something wrong with this picture! In the mean time, they keep hiding the pedophile clergy. I say, jail them all and let the butler go….

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politicianssuck
Posted on May 28, 2012 at 9:02am
@RALPIE

You said “Everything that we associate with religion is imaginary”. Does that include your religion? Yes, you not “believing” in GOD is a religion. You can’t prove or disprove there is no GOD so therefore you are acting on “faith” in believing there is no GOD. Therefore you are practicing a religion.

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psadie
Posted on May 27, 2012 at 4:31pm
Remember in one of “The Godfather” movies, there was an internal conspiracy with the Vatican Bank and the Mafia over money laundering? One Pope “died” shortly after his coronation due to the conspiring foes. If the investigators dig deep enough they will probably find more. I am a Catholic and I see what goes on in American parishes. The Church can’t handle money effectively and the priests just add to the problem.

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Magyar
Posted on May 27, 2012 at 1:55pm
The Prince of Darkness rides again!

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church has been kissing the Prince of Darkness for centuries— corruption and power have subverted the word of GOD! This is just the latest episode!

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waveman
Posted on May 27, 2012 at 12:08pm
Sad to see folks here bashing each others faith. The Bible has one great proverb that is quite appropriate for this thread; Proverbs 15:2 The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, But the mouth of fools spouts folly. Together as Christians we stand, divided we fall. The secular world would love this type of dialogue. Didn’t our Lord and Savior instruct us to come to each other privately to discuss errors in beliefs? One thing I can see from this thread is that there is enough lumber here to fill a Lowes store.

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Deceived and Disgusted
Posted on May 27, 2012 at 11:38am
“Paolo Gabriele (bottom), the pope’s butler, travels with Pope Benedict XVI on April 18, 2012.”
So is he the ‘bottom’ or is he the butler… or both?

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Ralpie
Posted on May 27, 2012 at 8:55am
Jesus was Jewish and he did effectevely ‘leave’ Judaism for his belief that he was the son of God. However he never proclaimed any other religion other than Judaism and still practised Pesach (passover) and the ‘last supper’ was Pesach anyway.

Christianity was formed by Jesus’s followers. They were ‘the followers of Christ’. But they didn’t convert to Christianity, they still practised Judaism, they simply formed ‘a group’ praising and believeing in Christ. Eventually, people started to turn ‘followers of Christ group’ into a religion, leaving Judaism behind and replacing the one god belief with Jesus being the son of God.

So you Christians actually belief in three Gods…much like the Multi-God religions of the past…Read your Bibles..please cover to cover…Reading the Bible is the Best way to becoming an Atheist!.

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- OMBrandon
  Posted on May 27, 2012 at 12:02pm
  Again, your willful ignorance- especially in light of your encouragement to read the bible- is deeply saddening. May I suggest that you take the time to practice what you preach? I pray that you become enlightened by the Word.
  
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john654
Posted on May 27, 2012 at 8:47am
The more I read comments at the Blaze the more I realize many that post here are the “Many” in John 6:66. Hopelessly lost in Protestant error.

John

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