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  • Vatican: New book of leaked documents 'criminal'

    Vatican: New book of leaked documents 'criminal'
    Associated PressBy NICOLE WINFIELD | Associated Press – 2 hrs 59 mins ago
    Vatican: New book of leaked documents 'criminal' - Yahoo! News
    VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Saturday denounced as "criminal" a new book of leaked internal documents that shed light on power struggles inside the Holy See and the thinking of its embattled top banker, and warned that it would take legal action against those responsible.

    Pope Benedict XVI has already appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the "Vatileaks" scandal, which erupted earlier this year with the publication of leaked memos alleging corruption and mismanagement in Holy See affairs and internal squabbles over its efforts to comply with international anti-money laundering norms.

    The publication Saturday of "His Holiness," by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, added fuel to the fire, reproducing confidential letters and memos to and from Benedict and his personal secretary which, according to the Vatican, violated the pope's right to privacy.

    Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said in a statement Saturday the book was an "objectively defamatory" work that "clearly assumes characters of a criminal act." He said the Holy See would get to the bottom of who "stole" the documents, who received them and who published them. He warned the Holy See would seek international cooperation in its quest for justice, presumably with Italian magistrates.

    The Vatican had already warned of legal action against 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 the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in a negative light.

    Much of the documentation is fairly Italy-centric: about a 2009 scandal over the ex-editor of the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, a never-before-known dinner between Benedict and Italy's president, and even a 2011 letter from Italy's pre-eminent talk show host Bruno Vespa to the pope enclosing a check for €10,000 for his charity work — and asking for a private audience in exchange.

    But there are international leaks as well, including diplomatic cables from Vatican embassies from Jerusalem to Cameroon. Some concern the conclusions of the pope's delegate the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order in a memo to the pope last fall. (He warned that the financial situation of the order, beset by a scandal over its pedophile founder, "while not grave, is serious and pressing.")

    Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the head of the Institute for Religious Works, otherwise known as the Vatican's bank, gets significant ink, with reproduced private memos to the pope with his take on the Vatican's response to the global financial crisis and how to handle the church's tax exempt status amid Italian government efforts to crack down on tax evasion.

    The bank has been trying for some two years to remedy its reputation as a shady tax haven beset by scandals, which include the collapse of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano and the death of its head, Roberto Calvi, who also helped manage Vatican investments and was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.

    In a bid to show it has mended its ways, the Institute for Religious Works this week invited ambassadors from 35 countries in for a tour and a chat with its managing director as part of a new transparency campaign. The tour came on the same day Holy See representatives were in Strasbourg discussing the first draft of a report from a Council of Europe committee on the Vatican's compliance with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing.

    British Ambassador Nigel Baker, who went on the Institute for Religious Works tour, later blogged that the Vatican's reputation depends on showing that its institutions are transparent. "Plenty still needs to be done. But the Holy See needs to stick to its guns. It is in their interest, and ours," he wrote.

    ___

    Follow Nicole Winfield at Nicole Winfield (@nwinfield) on Twitter
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

  • #2
    I guess this is where the term "Holier than thou" comes from....

    Comment


    • #3
      26 May 2012 Last updated at 10:23 ET
      BBC News - Vatican leak inquiry: Pope's butler charged

      The Pope's butler has been charged in connection with the Vatican's inquiry into a series of media leaks.

      Vatican magistrates have named 46-year-old Paolo Gabriele as the suspect in their investigation, saying he illegally took confidential documents.

      A series of leaks, dubbed Vatileaks, has revealed alleged corruption, mismanagement and internal conflicts.

      Last month, Pope Benedict XVI set up a special commission of cardinals to find the source of the confidential memos.

      Mr Gabriele is the pope's personal butler and assistant and one of very few laymen to have access to the Pope's private apartments.

      Documents found

      He lives with his wife and three children in an apartment within the Vatican walls, where Italian media report that a stash of confidential documents had been discovered.

      "I confirm that the person detained on Wednesday for illegal possession of private documents is Mr Paolo Gabriele, who remains in detention," the spokesman for the Holy See, Father Federico Lombardi said, according to Italy's state broadcaster, Rai.

      The Vatican's judge, Piero Antonio Bonnet, has been instructed to examine the evidence of the case and to decide whether there is sufficient material to proceed to trial.

      Mr Gabriele has nominated two lawyers capable of representing him at a Vatican tribunal, and has met with them.

      He would, the Vatican has said, have "all the juridical guarantees foreseen by the criminal code of the State of Vatican City".

      As the Vatican has no jail, Mr Gabriele is being held in one of the three so-called "secure rooms" in the offices of the Vatican's tiny police force inside the walled city-state, Reuters reports.

      If convicted, he could face a sentence of up to 30 years for illegal possession of documents of a head of state, probably to be served in an Italian prison due to an agreement between Italy and the Vatican, Italian media report.

      The Vatileaks scandal has filled Italian media - dominating the columns of Italian newspapers and filling TV programmes and magazines.

      'Poison pen' memos

      The detention comes during one of the most tumultuous weeks in recent history for the Vatican.
      The Pop's butler Paolo Gabriele sits in the Popemobile on 18 April 2012 Mr Gabriele had worked as the Pope's personal valet since 2006

      Last week a book, entitled His Holiness, was published by an Italian journalist with reproductions of confidential letters and memos between the pope 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.

      Last Thursday, the president of the Vatican bank - Ettore Gotti Tedeschi - was ousted by the bank's board.

      Sources close to the investigation said he too had been found to have leaked documents, though the official reason for his departure was that he had failed to do his job.

      Mr Tedeschi himself said the move had been a punishment for his attempt to make the bank more open.

      The BBC's David Willey, in Rome, says the leak of a string of highly sensitive internal documents from inside the Vatican's Secretariat of State, including personal letters to Pope Benedict XVI, has been an evident embarrassment to the Pope, prompting the rare investigation.

      The leaked documents include a letter to Pope Benedict by the Vatican's current ambassador to Washington alleging cronyism, nepotism and corruption among the administrators of Vatican City.

      Others concern "poison pen" memos criticising Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope's number two, and the reporting of suspicious payments by the Vatican Bank.
      To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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