After the Sentence. the Butler and His Confidants

The Chiesa
October 9, 2012

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350339?eng=y

[Sentenza del Tribunale...]

October 8, 2012 – Three years in prison, reduced with attenuating circumstances to a year and a half. This is the penalty to which the tribunal of Vatican City-State has sentenced the pope's former butler, Paolo Gabriele:

But Gabriele's sentence for the theft of documents from the pope's apartment does not at all remedy the disorder into which the central government of the Catholic Church has been plunged.

On the contrary, his trial has brought into even greater focus how vulnerable the pope's sphere of activity is, even when it should have the greatest protection.

From the trial has come confirmation that the former butler was able to steal more than a thousand important documents, even the most confidential, year after year, with extreme ease. Not at nighttime and on the sly, but during office hours, in the same room in which he worked together with the two personal secretaries of Benedict XVI, Georg Ganswein and Alfred Xuereb, across whose desks pass all of the correspondence directed to the pope or from him.

In this room, adjacent to and communicating with the private study of Benedict XVI – from the window of which the pope blesses the crowds in St. Peter's Square – a little desk had been assigned to Gabriele, with a computer and access to the photocopier. He photocopied – as has become known – even in the presence of the two secretaries, who entrusted him with little secretarial and correspondence tasks.

He took and brought home the photocopies of the documents, but not only these. In his bulging cabinets were also found numerous original documents, beginning with 2006, the year he entered into service. Papers signed by the pope. Others concerning his closest personal affairs. Others with the order written in his own hand in German: "zu vernichten," to be destroyed. Still others with diplomatic messages in cipher.

There immediate use exhausted, all of the personal papers of the pope are placed in an archive that is located on the floor below the pontifical apartment. This archive is protected by a consecrated German woman in service with the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, Birgit Wansing, who is also the most capable and trusted transcriber on computer of the texts written by Joseph Ratzinger by hand. Birgit Wansing's vigilance turns out to have been ironclad, impenetrable. This much at least.

Because on the floor above, for years, the opposite took place. When Benedict XVI had guests at table, Gabriele served, listened, and memorized. And when there were no guests, that is in the majority of cases, the butler himself sat to eat with the pope.

In those moments – he said in the tribunal – "I developed the conviction that it is easy to manipulate a person who has such enormous decision-making power. The pope asked questions about things about which he needed to be informed. Even I spoke out sometimes."

The fact is that Benedict XVI and his secretaries placed excessive confidence in a figure about whom they had only a rudimentary understanding, who came to be "the layman closest to the pope" through a series of fortuitous circumstances, and not even particularly skilled in carrying out the tasks entrusted to him, according to the sworn testimony of Monsignor Ganswein.

The fact is, moreover, that original documents were able to disappear, one after the other, without ever raising any alarm. And the realization that a check of 100,000 euro and a gold nugget offered to the pope had also disappeared had to wait until both of them turned up again in Gabriele's house.

The trial ascertained that, in the material act of stealing the pope's papers, Gabriele acted alone. This alone is a fact of exceptional gravity, because it is enough to undermine the certainty that one can write and speak to the pope with absolute confidentiality.

But the disorder is broader in scope. And the trial of Gabriele itself has given a glimpse of this. Other investigations for other crimes, with other possible defendants, are already underway.

"The investigation promises to be complex and extremely laborious, and therefore it could last for a very long time," wrote the prosecutor, Nicola Picardi, in the request for the prosecution of Gabriele, announcing further developments.

A second trial for aiding and abetting, against a lay employee of the secretariat of state, Claudio Sciarpelletti, will probably be held in November. The witnesses will include Monsignor Carlo Maria Polvani, the head of the documentation office of the secretariat of state and a nephew of the current nuncio in the United States, Carlo Maria Vigano, whose letters to the pope and to other Vatican officials, leaked by Gabriele and brought into the public domain, exploded the "Vatileaks" case in 2011.

But already in Gabriele's trial, the defendant named other persons, some of very high rank, whom he indicated as among those to whom he confided himself.

One of these was his confessor, Fr. Giovanni Luzi. To him Gabriele sent a second copy of many of the documents in his possession. Fr. Luzi told the judges that he had burned them once he found out about their dishonest origin. But to the very end he advised his spiritual disciple to deny any wrongdoing, "unless the holy father were to ask him in person." So far Fr. Luzi has been heard only as a witness.

Another of the confidants cited by Gabriele is Cardinal Paolo Sardi, patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, until 2009 the head of the office that oversees the drafting of the pope's discourses.

Under the reign of John Paul II, Sardi stood out for his propensity to eliminate or "plane" the suggestions that then-cardinal Ratzinger noted in the margins of the drafts of the papal discourses given to him for review.

And also with respect to Ratzinger as pope, Sardi has always been careful to distinguish himself. So much so that in a 2009 survey by Fr. Claude Barthe in "L'Homme Nouveau" – the Catholic magazine whose publisher distributed "L'Osservatore Romano" in France – Sardi was placed not without reason among the leaders of the curial party that rowed against secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, but definitively against Benedict XVI himself.

In effect, among the papers leaked by Gabriele and given to the media are two letters from Sardi to the pope, ferocious toward Bertone and Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, but between the lines toward Benedict XVI himself, who in the two matters recalled there was on the side of these two cardinals.

In the production of the discourses of pope Ratzinger – as in the Italian edition of his books – an important role is also played by his erudite former manager Ingrid Stampa, now in service with the secretariat of state and with free access to the pope. And she too was cited by Gabriele as being among his confidants.

Ingrid Stampa has a very close relationship with Sardi, cemented by years of working together. On the other hand, there has been tremendous friction between her and Monsignor Ganswein ever since, shortly after the election of Ratzinger, she slipped in beside the pope with cardinals Angelo Sodano and Eduardo Martinez Somalo in the official ceremony with which the newly elect took possession of the pontifical apartment. The photo of the quartet, published in "L'Osservatore Romano," gave rise to protests and jeers that have yet to die down.

Ingrid Stampa lives in the Vatican in the same building as Gabriele. But she also had the ability to meet with him in the pope's apartment, in which she was and is a guest at least once a week.

Interviewed by "Corriere della Sera" after Gabriele had brought up her name, Ingrid Stampa spoke of him in very positive terms: "He is a person who reasons and observes very well. He evaluates things. I imagine that he collected all of that material in order to get an idea of the situation. If he had concerns, he could have spoken of them to the holy father, or perhaps I could have done so for him."

But according to what was said in the tribunal, Gabriele presents a much different picture of himself. He has called himself "an infiltrator of the Holy Spirit" in the mismanagement of the Church, in order to correct it. In the hearings and then at the trial, the Vatican judges got the idea that he was very suggestible.

With the quantity of secret information he was able to pilfer, the intent of the Vatican authorities is now that Gabriele should not add insult to injury, with future memoirs or interviews.

Father Federico Lombardi has said that Benedict XVI will almost certainly grant him a pardon.

At the Vatican, they will assign him a new job suited for him, as far as possible from the quarters of the pope.

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The previous developments of the affair, with the complete texts of the complaint and the indictment:

> The Pope's Butler on Trial. But the Investigation Is Proceeding "In Various Directions"

And more on Ingrid Stampa:

> Vatican Diary / The two unknowns of the book on the Child Jesus

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Among the papers found by the Vatican gendarmeria in the home of Paolo Gabriele is the "Memo IOR/AIF," annotated by hand by Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, which was published in the newspaper "Il Fatto" on January 31, 2012.

The publication of that confidential document was blamed on Gotti Tedeschi himself, at the time the president of the Institute for Works of Religion, the Vatican "bank."

So much so that among the nine reasons given as justification for his removal from office on the following May 24 by the supervisory board of the Institute, there was set down in writing precisely his "failure to provide any formal explanation for the dissemination of documents last known to be in the President's possession."

Gotti Tedeschi has always denied this accusation. Now that the facts are on his side, justice requires that his honor should be restored.