VATICAN CITY -- "Vatican magistrates have formally indicted Pope Benedict XVI's personal assistant, Paolo Gabriele, on charges of aggravated theft and have indicted a computer technician from the Vatican Secretariat of State on minor charges of aiding Gabriele after he stole Vatican correspondence.
The publication Monday of the decision of Piero Bonnet, the Vatican's investigating judge, included for the first time the naming of a second suspect, Claudio Sciarpelleti, the Secretariat of State employee.
Vatican police found an envelope from Gabriele in Sciarpelleti's desk and arrested him, according to the documents explaining Bonnet's judgment. While the computer expert gave "contrasting versions of the facts" to investigators, in the end it was determined that there was enough evidence to bring him to trial on a charge of aiding and abetting Gabriele after the fact.
The Vatican magistrates did not set a date for the trial or trials, but Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said it would not be set before Sept. 20 because the Vatican court is in recess from Tuesday to Sept. 20..."
"Bonnet's report quoted Gabriele as telling Vatican investigators he acted after seeing "evil and corruption everywhere in the church" and he was sure Pope Benedict was not fully informed about what was going on.
"I was certain that a shock, even in the media, could be healthy in putting the church back on the right track," Gabriele was quoted as saying. "In a certain way I felt infiltrated" by the Holy Spirit, he said..."
..."Bonnet said investigators also found in Gabriele's apartment: a check made out to Pope Benedict for 100,000 euros (almost $123,000) from a Catholic university in Spain; a nugget -- presumably of gold -- from the director of a gold mining company in Peru; and a 16th-century edition of a translation of the Aeneid.
Gabriele was questioned repeatedly over the two-month period he spent detained in a 12-foot-by-12-foot room in the Vatican police barracks. He was allowed to return, under house arrest, to his Vatican apartment with his wife and family July 21 and will remain under house arrest until his trial."
1 comment:
It is right and proper that proceeds from the sale of tickets to Gabriele's burning at the stake be donated to a fungible retirement fund for deceased old priests.
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