BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Paolo Gabriele's father
defend's son's 'honesty'
By NICOLE WINFIELD


VATICAN CITY. July 15 (AP) — The father of Pope Benedict XVI's imprisoned butler said in a letter published Sunday his son was honest and that he hopes the truth will emerge concerning the leaks of sensitive Vatican documents.

Andrea Gabriele's comments marked the first by relatives of papal butler Paolo Gabriele, who was arrested May 23 after scores of documents from the papal apartments were found in his Vatican City home. He is accused of aggravated theft and remains the only suspect in the case of leaked Vatican documents, which exposed corruption [I am compelled to point this out every time the MSM trots out this unfair generalization: One specific case alone was mentioned by Mons. Vigano despite his broad accusations - reported overpricing of the Christmas creche for St. Peter's Square], infighting and power struggles in the Catholic Church's highest levels of governance.

While Andrea Gabriele defended his son, he hinted that the motivation behind the leaks was to expose wrongdoing for the sake of purifying the Church. He said he hoped that Benedict's call to carry out "the necessary cleaning of the Church" is realized.

"Paolo is paying the price firsthand for a reality that's difficult to understand until the motive of what has happened is made public," he wrote in the letter to Italian television station Tgcom 24, which published it on its website.

The younger Gabriele, a 46-year-old father of three, has been imprisoned in a holding facility located inside the Vatican gendarmes' barracks since his arrest; he is allowed regular visits by his family and lawyers, and attends Mass weekly.

Many Vatican watchers have seen in the leaks a plot to undermine the authority of Benedict's No. 2, the Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who has been blamed for a host of gaffes during Benedict's seven-year papacy.

But in one of his last acts before going on vacation July 3, Benedict sent a letter to Bertone, lamenting the "unjust criticism" that had been leveled against him and reaffirming his confidence in him.

Benedict's gesture was evidence of the seriousness with which the leaks have been treated in the Vatican. Aside from the criminal investigation that resulted in Paolo Gabriele's arrest, Benedict appointed three cardinals to canvas the Vatican bureaucracy to get to the bottom of the leaks.

They are due to report back to the Pope this week. Also expected soon is a decision on whether Gabriele will be indicted or whether charges will be dropped. If he is indicted, a trial in the Vatican tribunal — which would be open to the media — is likely to begin in September, the Vatican has said.

In the letter, Andrea Gabriele insisted on his son's "great generosity and moral integrity," and his love for the Church and both Benedict and Pope John Paul II. He said his son "is an honest person and will wait as long as it takes until everything is clarified."


In DIE WELT yesterday, Paul Badde had a lengthy article in which he focuses his attention on three persons who might have been behind Paolo Gabriele's work, with the simple motivation of envy and jealousy of those who are now closest to Benedict XVI by those who were previously close to him: Ingrid Stampa, the Pope's former housekeeper when he was a cardinal, who reportedly lives in the same building as Gabriele; Mons. Josef Clemens, who was private secretary to Cardinal Ratzinger for 19 years; and Cardinal Paolo Sardi, who used to head the section at SecState in charge of translating the Pope's texts, and who was one of Gabriele's earlier employers before he was recommended to work for Mons. James Harvey, the Prefect of the Pontifical Household. Badde claims that a survey of calls made to and from Gabriele's cellphone would most likely show frequent contacts with these three. However, Badde does not say that all three were working together to pull Gabriele's strings. Only that each one had strong reasons of jealousy and envy to want to strike against those close to the Pope now. (Why they chose to strike at Bertone especially, and not against Mons. Gaenswein, is not explained by Badde. One would think that, by virtue of the positions of confidence Stampa and Clemens previously held, their main target would be Gaenswein, not Bertone.]

I am not sure why no one has picked this up in the Italian or Anglophone media so far, but whereas I have always considered Badde one of the Vaticanistas most loyal to Benedict XVI, I find his theory rather tenuous if not implausible. Because it impugns three people separately and together, and even if Vatican investigation shows that indeed Gabriele's telephone trail shows frequent contacts with this unlikely trio, Badde's reasoning is entirely circumstantial and most unspecific.

In the case of Stampa, because she lives in the same building with Gabriele and is known to be friendly to him and his family. But Badde also grants that she is one of the few people who can get into the papal apartment and talk to the Pope whenever she asks to do so. [After April 19, 2005, Stampa was named to the Secretariat of State to work in the section on translations under Sardi, someone who was never known to be friendly to Cardinal Ratzinger oR Benedict XVI. In fact there were reports afterwards of conflicts in the working relationship between Sardi and Stampa, whose loyalty was with the Pope, whereas Badde claims they are 'one heart and one soul'!]]

In the case of Mons. Clemens, as with Ms. Stampa, no one before now has questioned his absolute loyalty to Benedict XVI, although there has always been gossip reported about the mutual dislike between him and Mons. Georg Gaenswein. Badde claims no other special relationship between Clemens and Stampa [other than the implied relationship during the years between 2000-2003 when both worked for Cardinal Ratzinger], except that the latter is one of the few people invited to the dinners at Clemens's apartment which the Pope reportedly attends about three times a year, and about which - another bishop reportedly told Badde - the Pope recently wrote Clemens to inform him there would be no such dinners again! [Would Clemens tell somebody else if this was the case?] No basis is laid for Clemens's possible influence over Gabriele.

As for Sardi, he may have continued to have some influence on Gabriele, but surely he could not have known when he recommended him to Mons. Harvey in the previous Pontificate, that Gabriele would eventually end up being assistant valet to John Paul II and then valet to Benedict XVI! Despite reports about his hostility to Benedict XVI, the latter appointed him pro-Patron of the Knights of Malta in 2010 (thus taking him out of the Secretariat of State) and made him cardinal in November, in order to become full Patron of the Knights. Of course, since he was a longtime SecState denizen, he is also the only one among the three 'accused' by Badde who had a visceral reason to single out Bertone as a target. [Both Clemens and Stampa (she from 2000) were working for Cardinal Ratzinger at the time Bertone was his #2 man at CDF from 1995-2002.]

Nonetheless, Badde is a serious journalist, and the fact that he went out on a limb with this theory shows how seriously he thinks of his singular deductions from Vatileaks.