Prisoner of conscience

[Reverend DSouza]

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- An already sordid scandal over leaked Vatican
documents took a Hollywood-like turn Saturday with confirmation that
the pope's own butler had been arrested after documents he had no
business having were found in his Vatican City apartment.

The detention of butler Paolo Gabriele, one of the few members of the
papal household, capped one of the most convulsive weeks in recent
Vatican history and threw the Holy See into chaos as it enters a
critical phase in its efforts to show the world it's serious about
complying with international norms on financial transparency.

The tumult began with the publication last weekend of a book of leaked
Vatican documents detailing power struggles, political intrigue and
corruption in the highest levels of Catholic Church governance. It
peaked with the inglorious ouster on Thursday of the president of the
Vatican bank. And it concluded with confirmation Saturday that Pope
Benedict XVI's own butler was the alleged mole feeding documents to
Italian journalists in an apparent bid to discredit the pontiff's No.
2.

"If you wrote this in fiction you wouldn't believe it," said Carl
Anderson, a member of the board of the Vatican bank which contributed
to the tumult with its no-confidence vote in its president, Ettore
Gotti Tedeschi. "No editor would let you put it in a novel."

The bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, issued a
scathing denunciation of Gotti Tedeschi in a memorandum obtained
Saturday by The Associated Press. In it the bank, or IOR by its
Italian initials, explained its reasons for ousting Gotti Tedeschi: he
routinely missed board meetings, failed to do his job, failed to
defend the bank, polarized its personnel and displayed "progressively
erratic personal behavior."

Gotti Tedeschi was also accused by the board of leaking documents
himself: The memorandum from the Institute for Religious Works, as the
bank is known, said he "failed to provide any formal explanation for
the dissemination of documents last known" to be in his possession.

In an interview with the AP, Anderson stressed that the latter
accusation was independent of the broader "Vatileaks" scandal that has
rocked the Vatican for months. But he stressed: "It is not an
insignificant issue."

Gotti Tedeschi hasn't commented publicly about his ouster or the
reasons behind it, saying he has too much admiration for the pope to
do so. He also hasn't been arrested, avoiding the fate that befell
Gabriele.

The 46-year-old father of three has been in Vatican detention since
Wednesday after Vatican investigators discovered Holy See documents in
his apartment. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said
Gabriele had met with his lawyers and that the investigation was
taking its course through the Vatican's judicial system.

Gabriele, the pope's personal butler since 2006, has often been seen
by Benedict's side in public, riding in the front seat of the pope's
open-air jeep during Wednesday general audiences or shielding the
pontiff from the rain. In private, he is a member of the small papal
household that also includes the pontiff's private secretaries and
four consecrated women who care for the papal apartment.

Lombardi said Gabriele's detention marked a sad development for all
Vatican staff. "Everyone knows him in the Vatican, and there's
certainly surprise and pain, and great affection for his beloved
family," the spokesman said.

The "Vatileaks" scandal has seriously embarrassed the Vatican at a
time when it is trying to show the world financial community that it
has turned a page and shed its reputation as a scandal plagued tax
haven.

Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months have undermined
that effort, alleging corruption in Vatican finance as well as
internal bickering over the Holy See's efforts to comply with
international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing.

The Vatican in July will learn if it has complied with the financial
transparency criteria of a Council of Europe committee, Moneyval -- a
key step in its efforts to get on the so-called "white list" of
countries that share financial information to fight tax evasion.

Anderson acknowleged that the events of the last week certainly
haven't cast the Holy See in the best light. And he said the bank's
board appreciated that the ouster of its president just weeks before
the expected Moneyval decision could give the committee pause.

"The board considered that concern and decided that all things
considered it was best to take the action at this time," Anderson
said. "These steps were taken to increase the IOR's position vis-a-vis
Moneyval."

The Vatileaks scandal began 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.

Nuzzi, 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 the pope and his secretary -- many
of them painting Benedict s No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in a
negative light.

Nuzzi has said he was offered the documents by multiple Vatican
sources and insisted he didn't pay a cent (euro) to any of them.

Gabriele was in Vatican custody and unavailable for comment. No known
motive has come to light as to why Gabriele, if he is found to be the
key mole, might have passed on the documents. Nuzzi declined to
comment Saturday on whether Gabriele was among his sources.

Bertone, 77, has been blamed for a series of gaffes and management
problems that have plagued Benedict's papacy and, according to the
leaked documents, generated a not inconsiderable amount of ill will
directed at him from other Vatican officials.

"For some time and in various parts of the church, criticism even by
the faithful has been growing about the lack of coordination and
confusion that reign at its center," Cardinal Paolo Sardi, the former
No. 2 official in the Vatican secretariat of state, wrote to the pope
in 2009, according to the letter cited in "His Holiness."

Anderson, who heads the Knights of Columbus, a major U.S. lay Catholic
organization, said he was certain the Holy See would weather the storm
and that the Vatican bank, at least, could move forward under a new
leader with solid banking credentials as well as a desire to show off
the bank's transparency.

"I hope this will be the beginning of a new chapter for the IOR and
part of that chapter will be restoring the public image of the IOR,"
he told AP. "I think we have a good story to tell."

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