Pope Benedict XVI's butler will be tried on an aggravated theft charge over the leaking of hundreds of secret papers from the pope's personal apartment to an Italian journalist, a Vatican spokesman said Monday.
The butler, Paolo Gabriele, acted out of a desire to combat "evil and corruption everywhere in the Church," according to a prosecutor in the case.
"I was certain that a shock ... would have been healthy to bring the church back onto the right track," the prosecutor, Nicola Piccardi, wrote in a report released Monday by the Vatican.
A second man, Vatican IT expert Claudio Sciarpelletti, will be charged with aiding Gabriele, according to the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman.
Sciarpelletti is not suspected of conspiring with Gabriele, merely assisting him, and is not under arrest, Lombardi said.
The investigation is continuing, said Lombardi, raising the possibility of more arrests.
The trials are not expected to start before September 20, Lombardi said.
Gabriele, one of the pope's closest personal assistants, was arrested in May on suspicion of passing the papers to an Italian journalist. He faces the possibility of one to six years behind bars, Lombardi said.
The scandal has rocked the Catholic Church hierarchy and could even affect who becomes the next pope.
It could be an effort to unseat Benedict's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who will run the conclave to choose the next pope if he is in office when Benedict dies, according to the Rev. Thomas Reese, author of "Inside the Vatican."
Gabriele was held in a special Vatican cell for about a month and a half before being released to house arrest in July.
The Vatican said Gabriele cooperated with investigators and admits leaking the papers, which consisted of faxes, letters and memos, including some from a high-ranking church official expressing concerns about corruption within the Vatican.
The arrest followed a top-level Vatican investigation into how the private documents appeared in the best-selling book "Sua Santita" ("His Holiness") by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.
The Vatican called the publication of his book "criminal" when it was released in Italian.
Copies of some documents used in the book were found in the butler's apartment, according to the judge's report released Monday.
Gabriele was not paid for handing over the papers, according to the judge, Piero Antonio Bonnet.
Cardinal Julian Herranz got a "pontifical mandate" in April to uncover the source of hundreds of personal letters and confidential documents that made their way to Nuzzi.
Nuzzi would not confirm the identity of his sources, but he told CNN that his primary source - whom he referred to as "Maria" in his book - "risked life and limb" if ever found out.
The source worked inside the Vatican, according to Nuzzi, who refused to give other details such as the source's gender, age and if he or she was clergy.
Nuzzi's book highlights an internal power struggle within the Vatican through numerous documents, including faxes, personal letters and inter-Vatican memos. He told CNN that he received the documents during a year of private meetings in secret locations.
The Vatican has not denied the authenticity of the documents but instead says the breach of privacy is a criminal act.
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Lordie, Lordie, Friends, can we believe this is happening?
The butler did it? Really?
Hidden incriminating papal documents? Aw, C’mon!
What a fascinating and intriguing church we may have after all!
And now I’m doing what lawyers unctuously remind friends never to do: gossiping about a news item of derring-do Inside the sacrosanct halls of papal apartments, thus rushing to judgment with a banner emblazoned “I Told You So!!!”, in finding guilty those we long suspected of devious conduct, ecclesially.
And not necessarily the perp who sneaked out the documents in the first place. Our rushing .to judgment is to keep the heat on and foment the desire of law enforcement to dig deep and deeper, to drag out in the open all the machinators of dogma-disciplie-decree poured out for centuries as gowned men kept control with tight, soft hands, in sacred silence.
Little details whittle our bloodhound’s nose as we surf the web looking for more and more and more among the little details: like the butler giving copies to his maître d'hôtel – great proof of their existence? – only to watch them vanish as the trembling fellow burned them all – tampering with evidence?
Glee rolls on with a hushed expectation that much more will be coming, because the Vatican boasts of an early trial in September, when all the evidence will be produced in open court.
Hasn’t any attorney told the curial gang to hush, hush, while sniffing reporters go wild. Exposing Vatican secrecy may be too dangerous for such exposure, and we may yet hear that the trial will either be abandoned or conducted behind closed doors.
The Vatican, though a State, can’t claim irremediable danger to national security, can it?
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“Look, up there, third floor ruins on the far corner. Those are the papal apartments, where the butler used to work….”
“OMG,this was the most powerful church In the entire history of civilization. For thousands of years."
“Say what you will, Buster. They ran a tight ship.”
“Yup. And an insignificant butler, low down on the rank of house servants, pulled the plug and sank it.”
Makes one wonder about papal power and those who created and guarded it so.
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