Believe it or not, someone has found a new angle to report on the Vatileaks story, which has been dormant for a couple of weeks now. At least, this item offers some concrete information - not just idle speculation - about the investigative process conducted by the three cardinals named by the Holy Father to conduct an administrative inquiry.
Cardinals' report on Vatileaks:
An overview on how the Curia functions
and how documents are managed
But did they find any culprits?
Translated from the Italian service of
The three cardinals named by Benedict XVI last March to pursue an administrative inquiry into the Vatileaks mess submitted a voluminous dossier to the Pope, largely made up of transcripts of more than a hundred of their three-on-one sessions with Vatican functionaries including laymen.
According to well-informed sources at the Vatican, the testimonies reportedly present a careful and detailed overview of how documents sent to the Pope are managed by his personal secretaries, and more in general, the communications flow to and from the Secretariat of State.
The dossier has been on the Pope's desk since late July, and many have been curious about what it contains, which has remained confidential.
The ongoing criminal investigation into Vatileaks - it has concluded so far only with indicting ex-valet Paolo Gabriele for aggravated theft (as being the easiest to establish of all the potential crimes committed), the resulting image of the Vatican as a giant sieve leaking confidential documents, and the pending trial of Gabriele, dictate continuing silence from the Vatican about the cardinals' report.
Obviously, Pope Benedict himself does not think it is the right time to disclose the conclusions drawn by the 'parallel inquiry' carried out by the three cardinals.
Our sources said that for each person the cardinal questioned, only the full name and position of the person precedes an exact transcript of the questions asked and the answers given, thus providing the most objective scheme to present their findings. It is also characteristic of the linear systematic procedure favored by Cardinal Julian Herranz, the canonist president of the three-man commission, who once headed the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.
The cardinals' questions were structured to get a clear picture not just of communications within the Curia, but the mechanisms by which the Curia itself functions. They did seek to establish, in particular, the trajectory of documents going both ways between the Pope's study and the Secretariat of State.
The Pope's personal secretariat was particularly scrutinized to find out how communications to the Pope are managed and the ways by which persons can get access to the Pope.
[All very well, except that Vatileaks turned out to be mainly the most inside of inside jobs - by the person who had the greatest private access to the Pope day in and day out!]
The cardinals' inquiry, it is said, provides the Pope not just with information regarding Vatileaks, but with information on any aspects of the Curial environment, internal relationships within it, and the general flow of documents and information within the Vatican.
The three cardinals - Herranz, Josef Tomko and Salvatore Di Giorgi - are said to favor even an eventual publication of their report.
But of course, everything depends on the Pope, who is unlikely to do anything about it, for all the reasons previously cited, until after Gabriele's trial.