Jew World Order

One person has been arrested so far on suspicion of taking the letters – Paolo
Gabriele, the Pope’s 46-year-old butler, who is now languishing in a 12ft by
12ft cell (which Vatican authorities prefer to call a “secure room”)
deep within the walled city state.

Nicknamed within the Vatican “Paoletto”, or little Paul, he is one
of a select handful of people who had daily access to the Pope in his
private apartments, and was a trusted member of the pontiff’s household.

His arrest, which followed the discovery of a pile of stolen documents in his
Vatican apartment, was “a heavy blow”, his wife said.

“My husband has always wanted the best for the Church. I am convinced
that he would never have done something that could damage the Holy Father,”
Manuela Citti, a housewife and mother of three, told Italian journalists.

“For us in the family, but also for the many friends who have known Paolo
for years, it was a heavy blow – unexpected and inexplicable. But we have
confidence in the (Vatican) magistracy and we believe everything will be
clarified.”

Mr Gabriele, who has worked for Benedict since 2006 and previously served John
Paul II, is being held within the headquarters of the Vatican Gendarmerie,
the city state’s 130-strong police force.

The cells are some of the least used in the world – they occasionally hold
pickpockets caught in St Peter’s Square but the last time all three were
full was in 1971, when four employees of the Vatican’s telephone exchange
were accused of stealing pontifical medals from the papal apartments.

Charged with “aggravated robbery”, the devout Mr Gabriele is
reported to be spending his time in quiet prayer, attending Mass and
receiving visits from his wife.

He has been cast as a 21st century Judas in the whole affair, but his motives
for allegedly stealing the Pope’s papers remain a mystery.

“The key question is why did he do it?” said Father Thomas Reese, a
Vatican expert at the Woodstock Theological Centre at Georgetown University
in Washington. “Was it for money, or for political or theological
reasons, or did he do it because somebody told him to?”

Swirling around the saga are accusations of espionage and betrayal worthy of
an airport thriller or, as one Italian commentator said, an Agatha Christie
mystery.

The leaks may be evidence of groups of bitterly opposed cardinals jockeying
for position in the hope of selecting the next Pope, as Benedict looks
increasingly frail.

The documents cast in a particularly bad light Tarcisio Bertone, who as
secretary of state is the Pope’s right-hand man and effectively the prime
minister of the world’s smallest state.

Regarded as overbearing, authoritarian and having far too little diplomatic
experience for the job, he is held responsible for a long list of bungles
which have embarrassed the Pope, from the rehabilitation of a
Holocaust-denying British bishop to bizarre and confused guidelines about
the Church’s attitudes to condom use.

He is also resented by an old guard loyal to his predecessor, Angelo Sodano,
who are bitter abut being passed over for promotion.

“There is deep disillusionment and animosity towards Bertone,” a
Vatican insider who asked not to be identified told The Sunday Telegraph.

“He is widely seen as an ineffective administrator. Normally Secretaries
of State have a strong diplomatic background, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t
even speak English.

“This pontificate has been marked by many mishaps and a lot of it is
blamed on Bertone. There are a lot of people inside the Vatican who would
like to see him leave.”

Resentment towards the Secretary of State was further fuelled in February,
when the Pope announced the appointment of 22 new cardinals – many of them
considered Bertone loyalists. It is the Sacred College of Cardinals which,
in a closed door conclave after the death of Benedict, will elect the next
Pope.

For now the German pontiff is standing by his 77-year-old lieutenant,
declaring that he still has trust in his “closest collaborators”.
On Saturday the two men were together in Milan during a three-day trip to
promote the institution of the family.

But the secretary of state has been badly damaged by claims in the new book –
including, most sensationally, that he gave the nod to a smear campaign
against the editor of L’Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian
Bishops’ Conference, involving allegations of a homosexual affair and
conviction for stalking – neither of which was true.

Vatican officials have denied that Cardinal Bertone did so.

The book also appears to show that Cardinal Bertone did his utmost to block
efforts to clean up alleged corruption and cronyism within the city state.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a senior member of the Vatican administration,
discovered that it was wasting millions of euros in overpaying for goods and
services. He found, for instance, that the Vatican had paid an exorbitant
€550,000 in 2009 for the traditional “presepe” Nativity
figures that are set up in St Peter’s Square at Christmas, when they should
have cost half that.

But Cardinal Bertone had him removed from his post three years before his term
was up and sent to faraway Washington as the Pope’s nuncio, or ambassador.

The book contains a pleading letter that Archbishop Vigano sent to the Pope,
whom he addressed in Italian as “Beatissimo Padre”, appealing in
the strongest terms to be allowed to continue with his work and protesting
that “transferring me at this moment would provoke profound confusion
and discouragement” among those in the Vatican trying to tackle “many
cases of corruption”.

His protestations had no effect – he was “liquidated” by
Cardinal Bertone, according to the book.

The cardinal has also been accused of impeding efforts to improve transparency
within the Vatican’s bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of
Religion.

He was reportedly instrumental in having the head of the bank, Ettore Gotti
Tedeschi, removed from his post late last month.

The secretary of state has “in recent years managed to build a spider’s
web of power, nominating cardinals and monsignors who are loyal to him as
the heads of numerous key departments in the Vatican,” Mr Nuzzi, 42,
claims.

Vito Mancuso, an Italian theologist, has no doubt that powerful figures in the
Vatican are out to get Cardinal Bertone. “These documents are like a
series of bullets aimed at Bertone. They want to sink him, to force him to
resign,” he said.

None of the leaked documents paint Benedict in a negative light, but they do
suggest that he has scant control over warring “princes of the Church”
as cardinals are known.

The murky saga has damaged the worldwide image of the Catholic Church, just as
it was trying to recover from the paedophile priest scandals.

“Faction fighting has gone on for centuries but normally behind close
doors,” said Father Reese in Washington. “What is upsetting to the
Pope is that these divisions have been made so public.”

Few people believe that the valet acted alone. It is widely speculated that he
was simply “il postino” – the postman, or courier of the stolen
documents, and has been put up as a convenient scapegoat.

Mr Nuzzi, the author of the explosive book, revealed last week that more than
10 separate informants fed him the stolen papers. He was first contacted in
the spring of 2011, in cloak-and-dagger circumstances straight out of a John
Le Carre spy novel.

He discovered later that at his first meeting with two unnamed Italian men in
their forties, in a cafe in Rome, he had been under surveillance by others
involved in the leaking of the documents.

“They wanted to make sure that we didn’t have a ‘tail’, that we were not
being followed,” Mr Nuzzi wrote in his book, which has become a
best-seller and was sold out in bookshops in Rome last week.

Those inside the Vatican have an “obsession” with secrecy, said the
author, who code-named his most important informant “Maria”.

Rome is abuzz with speculation that one or more senior figures, perhaps
monsignors or even cardinals, had a hand in the obtaining and disseminating
of the compromising documents.

Vatican investigators reportedly have another four or five suspects in their
sights and are preparing to enlist the help of Italian authorities – some of
the suspects are Vatican employees but citizens of Italy.

As the investigation widens, the head of the Gendarmerie may find his old
contacts come in handy – Domenico Giani, 49, was formerly an agent of Sisde,
Italy’s domestic secret service.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, has insisted that no cardinal
is under suspicion, as the Holy See reverts to its familiar tactic of
denial, bluster and obfuscation.

On Saturday it emerged that a new butler, Sandro Mariotti, had been appointed
to attend to the Pope’s needs. His predecessor, Mr Gabriele, will be
questioned again this week by Vatican magistrates, who are expected to rule
on whether there is enough evidence to send him to trial in the Palazzo del
Tribunale, next to the Gendarmerie building where he is incarcerated.

If found guilty, he could in theory receive a custodial sentence, although he
would have to be transferred to an Italian jail, because the Vatican has
none.

“Are they really going to do that, though, when this whole affair has
already proved so embarrassing?” said the Vatican insider. “It’s
not the Pope’s style.

“My hunch is that they will make a deal whereby he tells them everything
he knows and in return gets to keep his pension. This is not the Middle
Ages, they are not going to let him rot in prison.”