Pope's butler and layman to face trial

14 Aug 2012, 6:41 am   -   Source: AAP
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The Pope's butler and a fellow lay employee have been ordered to stand trial for the alleged theft of documents from Pope Benedict's apartment.

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A Vatican judge has ordered the Pope's butler and a fellow lay employee to stand trial for the alleged pilfering of documents from Pope Benedict XVI's private apartment, in an embarrassing scandal that exposed power struggles and purported corruption at the Holy See's highest levels.

The indictment accused Paolo Gabriele, a butler arrested at the Vatican in May, of grand theft - a charge that could bring up to six years in jail, although the Pope could pardon his once-trusted aide after any conviction.

Gabriele was also accused of taking a cheque for 100,000 euros ($A117,000) - made out to Benedict and donated by a Spanish Catholic university - from the papal quarters.

Gabriele's lawyer, Carlo Fusco, told The Associated Press the cheque had "by chance" ended up in a pile of the Pope's paperwork Gabriele had accumulated in his apartment.

Fusco said his client "had never taken money or any other economic advantage" in his role as butler.

While the Vatican has insisted that Gabriele, a 45-year-old married layman who lives with his family in Vatican City, was the only person under investigation, the indictment also orders trial for Claudio Sciarpelletti, a 48-year-old computer expert in the Secretariat of State office charged with aiding and abetting the butler.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters a three-judge panel would try the two defendants together.

No date was set for the trial, which will be open to reporters, but Lombardi said it would start at the very earliest in late September.

The Holy See has been on a defensive footing since documents alleging corruption and exposing power struggles began appearing in the Italian media in January.

In May, the book, His Holiness, by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi was published containing dozens of documents from the Pope's desk, including letters written to him.

Lombardi said on Monday magistrates had not taken on the wider, more serious issue revealed by the leaked documents - alleged corruption within the top ranks of the church.

He said Vatican investigators would pursue other culprits, but sidestepped a question on whether a special panel of cardinals Benedict set up to deal with the scandal had made any inroads into the wider question of moral wrongdoing among those higher up.

The trial request and indictment basically lay out a script for what could be Gabriele's line of defence when he goes before the tribunal - a religiously inspired, misguided, would-be whistleblower.

Vatican Prosecutor Nicola Picardi, in seeking trial, quoted Gabriele as telling his interrogators after his arrest that "seeing evil and corruption everywhere in the Church ... I was sure that a shock, even a media one, would have been healthy to bring the church back on the right track".

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