VATICAN CITY
The Guardian (UK)
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Monday 2 November 2015
The Vatican has arrested two members of a commission set up by Pope Francis to advise him on economic reforms on suspicion of leaking secret documents.
Monsignor Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda, a high-ranking Spanish clergyman, and Francesca Chaouqui, an Italian laywoman and public relations expert, were arrested after a months-long investigation into the dissemination of “news and confidential documents” to two writers of forthcoming books, the Vatican said.
No further information about the nature of the documents was released. The Vatican described the leaks as a “serious betrayal of the trust bestowed by the pope”.
Balda and Chaouqui were members of a special commission appointed to address possible economic reforms of the Vatican. It has since been disbanded.
Vallejo Balda, 54, is believed to be the highest-ranking member of the Vatican’s central bureaucracy, known as the Curia, ever to have been arrested.
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