VATICAN CITY
Straits Times
VATICAN CITY (AFP) – A Spanish priest at the centre of a controversial Vatican leaks trial admitted on Monday to passing classified documents to the press but insisted he had acted under emotional blackmail from a female colleague with whom he was romantically entangled.
“Yes, I sent documents to journalists, I handed over a list of five pages with 87 passwords,” Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda told a Holy See court.
The Spanish Vatican official said he had not been “fully lucid” when he leaked the documents and had since been treated by a psychiatrist for depression and stress.
Vallejo Balda described his former colleague, Italian PR consultant Francesca Chaouqui, as a dangerous and manipulative woman who had cooerced him into leaking the documents by threatening to reveal an intense relationship between them.
“I was certain that there were illegitimate interests behind Chaouqui,” he told the court, revealing that he believed his colleague and her husband to have been working for the Italian secret services.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.