Let me allow the New York Times to occupy the first post about the Gabriele verdict, because it typifies all the erroneous and fallacious assumptions made by the MSM in reporting this case :
Pope’s butler [ex-valet] sentenced
to 18 months for stealing documents
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
VATICAN CITY, Oct. 6 — A Vatican City court on Saturday sentenced the Pope’s butler
[he is no longer the Pope's anything current, but the ex-valet] Paolo Gabriele, to 18 months in prison for leaking confidential documents to the media.
The court found Mr. Gabriele guilty of theft and remanded him to
house arrest[??????]. A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Saturday that it was “very likely “ that the Pope would pardon Mr. Gabriele, who had tended to the Pope’s personal needs for six years.
Mr. Gabriele, 46, remained impassive as the chief judge, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, pronounced the sentence “in the name of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, gloriously reigning,”
[that has been traditional expression for monarchs and sovereigns for centuries!] in a wood-paneled room in the Vatican City tribunal, in a nondescript palazzo near to the apse of St. Peter’s Square.
The verdict capped
one of the most embarrassing episodes in recent Vatican history after
a tell-all book based on dozens of the documents leaked by Mr. Gabriele revealed accusations of
financial misdeeds, infighting and widespread tensions within the Vatican.
The court formally sentenced Mr. Gabriele to three years in prison and required him to pay court costs. But the sentence was reduced to 18 months after the court acknowledged several extenuating circumstances, including the butler’s public recognition that he had betrayed the Pope’s trust. The court also took into account Mr. Gabriele’s belief, “albeit erroneously” that his motivations for leaking the documents had been pure.
Before the verdict, Mr. Gabriele addressed the court and told the three judges: “I am not a thief.”
Speaking with little emotion in his voice, Mr. Gabriele said that “he felt the strong conviction deep inside to have acted exclusively for love, a visceral love, for the church” and the pope.
For several months, beginning in November, the butler gave a number of documents to a journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who published many of them in the book “His Holiness: the Secret Papers of Pope Benedict XVI.” The most embarrassing revelations pointed to
alleged misdeeds within the Vatican’s administration and its chief financial institution.
[General allegations were made, as it is so easy to do, but none were specified at all! And the compliant enabling MSM did not even think it worthwhile to ask about, much less investigate, any specific and concrete cases.]
Two weeks after the book was published in May, Mr. Gabriele was arrested when hundreds of photocopied documents were found in his apartment inside Vatican City, where he lived with his wife and their three children. Mr. Gabriele spent nearly two months in a holding cell at the Vatican before being released to house arrest.
In depositions to Vatican court officials, Mr. Gabriele admitted to taking documents but said he had acted in the interests of the Pope, who he believed was not adequately informed about
the misdeeds flourishing within the Vatican. [One would think a respectable journalist would place Gabriele's allegations in quotation marks!]
The butler [FORMER VALET!] told officials investigating the crime that he wanted
to bring to light and publicize the evil and corruption as an incitement to clean it up. [Again, the rote repetition of Gabriele's words as if it were gospel truth!]
The trial lasted less than a week and focused the attention of the world’s media onto the world’s smallest — and most secretive — city-state.
“It’s a good sentence, a fair sentence,” said Mr. Gabriele lawyer, Cristiana Arru, who has three days to appeal the sentence.
A Vatican computer expert has also been indicted and is accused of aiding and abetting Mr. Gabriele, and his trial is expected to begin soon.
During a briefing to reporters Saturday afternoon, Father Lombardi said
the investigation into the leaks and possible other charges against Mr. Gabriele and others had not formally closed, though the investigations had not turned up anything to suggest “collaboration or complicity” on the part of any others. [I think it is not Fr. Lombardi's place to say the latter, since he is pre-judging an episode that is clearly still unfinished business.]
Now that the trial has ended, the Pope can decide whether to pardon his former employee,
a move that Father Lombardi said was “very likely.” [Again, it definitely is not Lombardi's place to anticipate the Pope's action with a statement that effectively pre-announces something that ought to be the Pope's prerogative alone, and thereby 'violates' the Pope's freedom of action.]
In making his decision, the Pope would probably consider the results of a commission of cardinals that he had entrusted to carry out a separate, confidential, investigation. [This statement further implies that the cardinals' 'investigation' uncovered no complicity at all, again effectively pre-announcing its conclusion, or one of its conclusions. While it seems quite likely that Gabriele needed no mastermind to carry out his treason - self-anointed Messiahs need no masterminds - he was really 'aided and abetted' not just by the general media cynicism and perennial suspicions about diabolical deeds within the Vatican but by the attitude of those within the Vatican who have self-serving motives to feed these suspicions actively through the years. The latter are the persons whom I had hoped the cardinals' investigation might uncover, though it seems from earlier news reports that their findings would focus more on structures and relationships among the various Vatican offices rather than on naming any persons.]
But Father Lombardi could not say “when or how” that pardon might be granted. He would also not speculate on whether Mr. Gabriele would remain an employee of the Vatican. “That is another chapter,” he said.
[I do not know why Fr. Lombardi felt compelled at all to volunteer his earlier two statements about a pardon for Gabriele and the outcome of the cardinals' investigation - when all he had to say was "The tribunal's verdict speaks for itself. I cannot speak for the Pope nor for the cardinals' commission!"... It's bad enough that the actual verdict seems very much like the mouse that was delivered after a mountain's heavy labor, without further underscoring it the way he did - and therefore reinforcing the preconceived conclusion of many skeptics that this whole process against Gabriele was merely intended to give the appearance of 'doing justice' but is really part of an entire effort to downplay, if not whitewash, the Vatileaks episode.
Yes, the Vatileaks episode should be downplayed in that it really revealed nothing new or particularly scandalous that had not previously been known and even amply reported upon - even if you would not know that from the way the MSM keep screaming 'corruption and scandal in the Vatican' just as Gabriele keeps claiming "evil and corruption everywhere in the Church".
There is nothing in the documents that concretizes those allegations at all, and no allegation comes even close to being on the order or magnitude of the genuine scandal of the 1980s IOR involvement in Banco Ambrosiano that led to the suicide (or murder) of a bank executive and the Vatican to restitute some $250 million to bank clients affected by the Banco Ambrosiano collapse.
But Vatileaks should nonetheless have opened the way to unmask all those who, less simple-minded and certainly far more malicious than Gabriele, have been actively working against the Pontificate of Benedict XVI, and who are well and comfortably nested within their middle-management niches in the Vatican bureaucracy. Instead of which, we may actually be witnessing a defensive 'cover-up' for all these wriggly worms (pernicious tapeworms, actually, fattening off their prey), despite Benedict XVI's intentions of full transparency.
P.S. I have read one reputable Italian commentator on Vatican affairs say that the Pope ought to pardon Gabriele and must do this before the Year of Faith begins, because believers would expect him to do so, after Gabriele has said that he 'loved him like (as if he were) a father' and has admitted being guilty of betraying the Pope's trust, and "what father would not pardon a son who erred and has said he is sorry"? All that is certainly Christian, but it is most unfortunate all this has to come at this time when the Church and the Pope certainly have far more to worry about than a self-deluding simpleton's misplaced messianic zeal.
On the one hand, one wishes Vatileaks behind us, but it is not, for as long as obvious questions remain unanswered - not who was Gabriele's mastermind, if any, but who are those persons ingrained into the Vatican machinery who are deliberately disrupting the mechanism. Some creative means must be proposed to pry them out of the system ASAP.
However, we can certainly do our part to refocus on the Synodal ASsembly for the New Evangelization and the Year of Faith, in the earnest hope that behind the scenes, those who are in a position to do so will continue to work on the critical task of identifying and purging out the vermin from the Vatican.
Here's a report from AGI's Salvatore Izzo to complete the reportage on this event - it branches out in many directions, including Fr. Lombardi's ruminations on Vatileaks:
Tne conclusion to
Gabriele's trial
by Salvatore Izzo
VATICAN CITY, Oct. 6 (Translated from AGI) - "In the name of His Holiness, floriously reigning" and having "invoked the Most Holy Trinity", Vatican judges Giuseppe Dalla Torre, Paolo Papanti Pelletier and Venerando Marano issued today their first verdict in connection with Vatileaks, after just over two hours of consultation this morning.
All this after an investigation that lasted two months and a half, and a brief trial (4 sessions in 7 days) but one that was
devastating [for whom???]. with the Pope's private secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein,
forced to testify in public
[I don't think GG ever felt he was 'forced' to do something it was his obvious duty to do!], and with various persons who have always been held in esteem now in the media meatgrinder because of certain provocatory statements made by the accused, ex-valet Paolo Gabriele.
The court found him guilty of aggravated theft for taking and copying documents from the Pope's private desk and turning over the copies to a journalist who collected them into a book published last May. It sentenced Gabriele to three years of reclusion, which was 'reduced' to a year and a half because of attenuating circumstances....
When Gabriele was asked to give a concluding statement at the end of the competing arguments between his attorney and the Vatican prosecutor, he said: "What I most feel strongly within me is the belief that I acted out of exclusive, Iould say, visceral, love for the Church of Christ and for its visible leader. This is what I feel. And If I must say so again, I do not feel I am a thief".
[I now cringe instinctively everytime I am about to read anything said by Gabriele, and find myself shuddering in repulsion after I have read what he has to say in all his sanctimony. Sure, the Pope may well forgive him, but no Catholic who truly loves the Church would do anything so self-serving, self-centered and utterly selfish as not to be able to see the harm he is actually doing and has already done to the Church.]
The judges obviously did not believe him completely.
[It's not a question of belief. It's a question of objective fact. He did steal in the most barefaced manner - in front of all his co-workers in the papal household - and he admitted it. How is he not a thief? The best of intentions - in his case, what he beliebed 'best' was actually the worst - never justifies the commission of any crime or sin. That he cannot even take responsibioity for a crime he has admitted to committing is part of his self-delusion.]
But in some ways, his allegation of good faith was 'accepted' because shortly after the verdict, prosecutor Nicola Picardi hastened to sign an order for Gabriele to continue under house arrest.
[For how long, or is that going to be the 'reclusion' meant in the sentence?]
P.S. The Vatican Radio report on the sentencing has the following additional information that makes clear the sentence of 'reclusione' is for imprisonment, not house arrest as the NYT claimed:
A partial ban was handed down on any future employment. Should Gabriele remain a Vatican employee he will not be allowed to work in any offices that deal with " judicial, administrative or legal” affairs.
Paolo Gabriele’s lawyer has not ruled out the possibility of appealing the sentence, given what she has described as “holes” in the judicial investigation. However Ms Arru also described Saturday’s verdict as “balanced”.
For now she said Paolo Gabriele will remain under house arrest in his family home in Vatican City State. The Court must meet again to decide if and when Gabriel will be imprisoned.
And for Vatican press director Fr. Federico Lombardi to declare that "the eventuality of the Pope granting pardon is concrete and very possible".
"I can say without fear of being belied," he said, "that Benedict XVI xould grant the aprdon even without a formal request, because it is within his power".
The penalty inflicted on Gabriele is particularly mild because "the judges acted according to the Zanardelli code, which considers three years appropriate penalty for the crime, but they also applied Art. 26 of Law 50 promulgated in 1969 which provided for various possibilities of reduced sentences - from life imprisonment to limited reclusion, from perpetual interdiction to temporary, and in case of dententive penalties, they may be reduced by as muchas three-quarters, explained Lombardi, saying he was satisfied at the 'magnanimous application of this article'.
After having tried to accuse the Vatican Police of machinations and maltreatment of her client (though yesterday, in his message to the Vatican Police on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, patron of the Corps, the Pope personally defended them, praising the commitment and dedication of Corps Commandant Domenico Giani and his men), Gabriele's lawyer Cristiana Arru this time questioned the transparency of the Vatican Press Office itself regarding her client, claiming that the treasonous valet had been subjected to a 'media chokehold that will continue into the future'.
"Law since ancient days provides for definite penalties characterized by being circumscribed within a certain time. Even when the actual punishment of imposing a yoke that carried the sentence was in use, it was only for a determined number of days", she said. "But Paolo Gabriele has been inflicted with a permanent penalty.
[Gabriele inflicted it on himself! He wanted to be immortal -but sorry, 'Paoletto', you will forever live in infamy, instead, for all your misplaced messianism.]/DIM] With the publication on August 13 of the prosecutor's summary that included expert psychiatric evaluation of him, which concerns the private life of the accused, his dignity was violated exposing him to public ridicule, because now anyone seeking his name on the Internet will immediately be exposed to the psychiatric evaluation of him that has to do with
sensitive data that ought to have been kept private".
[Two things: Arru has been quite barefacedly dishonest in bringing up all these objections at the last minute: First, the allegations of abuse by the Vatican police, when in all of the lawyers' (she and Carlo Fusco before he resigned) statements at the time of Gabriele's detention, they kept saying he was treated well; and now, with this objection. Why did they raise no objections at the time the prosecutor's summary was released? Since no one - not even the media - protested at the time, I presumed that it was unexceptionable SOP in Italy and the Vatican to release such summaries! And a fine thing for Arru to go into high dudgeon about 'sensitive data that ought to have been kept private' - wasn't that exactly what Gabriele did against the Pope, even if there was nothing in what he disclosed that was embarrassing to the Pope at all? In fact, the most embarrassing element in all this for the Pope was the fact that a man who rendered the most intimate personal services to him daily since 2006 could so flagrantly have been stealing from him all the time!]
Today, for the first time, the prosecutor revealed the name of the priest to whom Gabriele said he consigned copies of everything he provided to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi. He is Fr. Giovanni Luzi, who was intgroduced to Gabriele by his previous confessor, Fr, Paolo Miracutti, professor of theology at the Cahtolic University of Rome, who is also the confessor for the Marian community founded by Luzi in Palestrina. Luzi claimed during the investigative phase that he burned everything turned over to him by Gabriele.
The ones who have really been subjected to a media chokehold are persons named by Gabriele in open court, including two cardinals (Comastri and Sardi), two monsignors (Cavina and Polvani*), and three laymen (Ingrid Stampa, and Maureillo and Catano, two persons whom Gabriele claimed to have provided him with inside information against Inspector Giani of the Vatican police), who have now been dragged into the fray simply because he claimed he had spoken to them about his 'concerns'. [*Izzo is wrong - Gabriele never named Polvani, whose name was brought in because he is the boss at the secretariat of State of Claudio Sciarpelletti, the only other person accused so far of anything in connection with Vatileaks.]
Fr. Lombardi commented on these other names: "No proof has been shown of any shared guilt or complicity in the actions of Paolo Gabriele, and he himself said that they had nothing to do with what he did. [He did say that he may have been 'suggestible' because of his conversations with them, which was another rather malicious statement on his part.] You cannot continue to attribute co-responsibility or shared guilt with the persons whose names were brought up during the investigation".
But Lombardi reiterated that investigation into Vatileaks would continue: "It has not been closed except for this specific charge of aggravated theft".
As for the report of the three cardinals named by Benedict XVI to pursue an administrative canonical investigation of Vatileaks, Lombardi said nothing has been made public about it so far in order not to interfere with the court proceedings.
"I have observed", he said, "the full and total independence of the judges of Vatican City State form other authorities, and the great respect of the Secretary of State who did not exert pressure of any kind". [Why on earth should Lombardi single out the Secretary of State to praise for not doing anything he is not supposed to do in any case????]
He added: "Besides the positive impression of separation of powers, there is the positive impression of the rapidity of the proceeding, which I think was influenced by the fact that according to the legal code followed by the Vatican, the investigative process becomes part of the court record without having to reconstruct it all over".
"In the Church, shadowy dealings and betrayal are not unusual, but they have been faced with courage, and as never before, during this Pontificate", says an editorial in L'Osservatore Romano on the day marked not only by the first sentence in connection with Vatileaks, but also when the Vatican announced the promotion of Mons. Charles Scicluna from being chief prosecutor of sex-abuse cases against priests at the CDF to being auxiliary Bishop of Valletta in his home country of Malta.
Editor Vian notes that the media would prefer to dwell on 'the negative aspects' but calls on them not to overlook "the will to renew the Church despite the contradictions, deficiencies, and inevitable limitations found in any human institution, and notwithstanding the tenacious sterotypes that have sought and continue to seek to disseminate contrary views about the Church which are not respectful of reality".[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/10/2012 19:27]