Three new suspects in Vatileaks scandal
The Vatican affair is so illustrious that the media have baptised it "Vatileaks".
It may already have a name - but who are the culprits: the housekeeper who has lived for 14 years at the side of the Pope? Or a bishop who could not keep his jealousy in check?
After sixty days of detention Paolo Gabriele is back home with his wife and three children. The fired butler of the Pope remains in prison (under house arrest) anyway: He, who used to be so talkative may not talk to anyone. The walls of the Vatican, which were a privilege for him to live behind, Gabrielle is not allowed to leave. And in the next few weeks, a papal investigator will decide whether to open criminal proceedings against the 46-year-old Italian. From the desk of Benedict XVI.Gabriele stole an enormous amount of confidential documentation and leaked it to journalists.
Maximum penalty on conviction: six years in prison.
The case excited Italian media from the beginning. The secret documents were regarded as evidence of a palace coup -mostly directed against Benedict's confidant, the controversial Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and against Benedict's private secretary Georg Gänswein. All observers maintain that it is unlikely that the apparently innocent little ex-butler Gabriel could have organized the document leak on his own. Concurrently with the legal investigation, the three-member commission of cardinals established by the Pope has completed its investigation. During interrogation of dozens of high and the very highest dignitaries of the Curia, it has probably discovered Gabrielle's backers. "Surprises" were announced - but the report of the Cardinals will be known only to the Pope.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi rejected on Monday "decidedly and to the fullest extent" a German press report that just two of the most intimate confidants Benedict were stamped with treachery. An "abyss of envy and personal jealousy," as it says in the newspaper "Die Welt", had brought Joseph Ratzinger's former housekeeper Ingrid Stampa and his former longtime private secretary Josef Clemens to stand "in front of or behind Gabriele".
The housekeeper had lived for 14 years with Cardinal Ratzinger in his household.You can not cope any, that the present Pope, "another familiar perhaps more than you," says the report. The other - today's Curial Bishop Clemens, who was Ratzinger's private secretary for 19 years - holds his successor George Gänswein for incompetent and was no longer able to keep his own "almost irrational jealousy in check" . The third person in the conspiracy - in addition to the two Germans- is alleged to be an Italian cardinal who formerly wrote speeches for John Paul II . When he resigned for reasons of age in 2011, Benedict is said to have "without further ado accepted" the application.
So writes the Rome correspondent of the "Welt", Paul Badde, who is well placed in the Vatican intrigue: Privately, he publishes the "Vatican magazine", an anti-left, theologically conservative illustrated magazine which supports the Papal office, with which he has made friends in the Vatican State and opened doors. Badde would probably never denigrate particular people from Benedict's closest friends and acquaintances, if not he did not have something substantial in his hand. Curiously, the motivation for Badde is the same as his three main suspects and Paolo Gabriele. All, they say, want to help the Pope .
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