Pope’s butler to assist Vatican inquiry

— One of the Vatican’s biggest scandals in decades widened Monday with the pope’s butler - arrested for allegedly having confidential documents in his home - agreeing to cooperate with investigators, his lawyer said Monday.

Paolo Gabriele’s pledge to cooperate with Vatican magistrates raises the specter that high ranking prelates may soon be named in the investigation into leaks of confidential Vatican correspondence that have shed a light on power struggles and intrigue inside the highest levels of the Catholic Church.

Italian media reported Monday that a cardinal is suspected of playing a major role in the leaks. However, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, denied the reports. He said many Vatican officials were being questioned in the investigation but insisted “there is no cardinal under suspicion.”

He also dismissed as “pure fantasy” a rash of other unsourced reports about the investigation in the Italian media, which have been on a frenzy ever since reports of Gabriele’s detention emerged Friday.

Gabriele, the pope’s personal butler since 2006, was arrested Wednesday evening after confidential documents were found inside his Vatican City apartment. He remains in custody in a Vatican detention facility, accused of theft, and has met with his wife and lawyers.

Gabriele’s lawyer Carlo Fusco said his client would“respond to all the questions and will collaborate with investigators to ascertain the truth.”

The 46-year-old father of three was always considered extremely loyal to Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, for whom he briefly served, according to Vatican insiders, who said they were baffled by his purported involvement in the leaks.

Fusco said Monday that Gabriele was “very serene and calm.”

So far, Gabriele remains the only one who has been arrested in the leaks case, but Lombardi stressed that the investigation was continuing.

The scandal broke in January when Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi broadcast letters 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.

Over the next few months, documents were leaked to Italian journalists that laid bare clear power struggles inside the Vatican over its efforts to show greater financial transparency.

The Vatican probe is working on two separate tracks: Vatican magistrates are pursuing the criminal investigation, and Gabriele was arrested as part of that.

Separately, Pope Benedict XVI has appointed three cardinals to form an investigative commission to look beyond the narrow criminal scope of the leaks.

Those cardinals have the authority to interview broadly across the Vatican bureaucracy, Lombardi said, and can share information with Vatican prosecutors and receive information from them. They report directly to the pope, Lombardi said.

“He’s aware of the delicate situation that the Roman curia is going through, but he’s keeping up his serenity and great faith and moral superiority,” Lombardi said.

Benedict has not commented directly on the leaks or the investigations.

Nuzzi, the author of Vatican SpA, a 2009 volume laying out shady dealings of the Vatican bank based on leaked documents, last weekend published His Holiness, which presented a trove of other documents including personal correspondence to and from the pope and his secretary, many of them painting Benedict’s No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in a negative light.

Nuzzi said he was offered the documents by multiple Vatican sources and insisted he didn’t pay any of them.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 05/29/2012

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