Post date: Oct 06, 2012 4:50:14 PM
A Vatican spokesman says there is a strong possibility that Pope Benedict will pardon his former butler, after Paolo Gabriele was sentenced to 18 months in jail for stealing sensitive documents. The lawyer Gabriele says she is unlikely to appeal the sentence handed down to her client.
VATICAN ( ROME, ITALY) (OCTOBER 6, 2012) (REUTERS) - : Pope Benedict is likely to pardon his former butler, a Vatican spokesman said on Saturday (October 6) after Paolo Gabriele was sentenced to 18 months in jail for stealing sensitive documents.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi also told reporters the court reached its verdict in "full independence" without any interference from Vatican officials."I can say that the possibility of a pardon is very strong," Lombardi told journalists after the sentence had been announced.
"I cannot tell you anything about the time frame or the process but on the fact that the Pope will now study the issue and evaluate how to proceed, and that could be how to proceed with a pardon, this is a possibility. That I can say without any fear of it being untrue," Lombardi said.
A Vatican court convicted Gabriele of stealing sensitive documents and sentenced him to 18 months in prison, at the end of one of the most sensational trials in the recent history of the Holy See. The case became to be known as "Vatileaks."
"In my opinion I wouldn't say anyone in the Vatican is happy about this, this is a very sad chapter but it does seem to be a just trial and a just sentence" said Senior Advisor of Communications for the Vatican, Gregory Burke.
"I don't think the papal pardon is a done deal by any means. It is certainly a Christian thing to do, to forgive, but the pope does want to look at the acts from the trial, he wants to read all the papers from the trial" Burke said.
The trial, which started on Saturday (September 30), threw open the window on a betrayal of trust and sensitive secrets in the Vatican.
A former member of the small, select group known as "the papal family", Gabriele was one of fewer than 10 people who had a key to an elevator leading directly to the pope's apartments.
In the course of the trial, intimate details emerged of the inner workings of an institution long renowned for its secrecy. But no one expected any important information to come out with the trial.
"The verdict was already written, we could have said it a week ago. It is a very soft verdict and it has only the goal to close with the affair," said Marco Politi, journalist and Vaticanspecialist.
"It was a brief case because the court essentially focused itself on one question. DidPaolo Gabriele steal these documents? It didn't go into questions like; who else stole the documents? Who are these famous 'corvi' (spies)? Is there another group at theVatican that is involved in this? It didn't go into that area, just stuck to the thing of: Did he steal the documents? - and that was a given" said Paddy Agnew, correspondent for the Irish Times.
The documents Gabriele leaked constituted one of the biggest crises of Pope Benedict's papacy when they emerged in a muckraking expose by an Italian journalist earlier this year.
The case has been an embarrassment for the Vatican, coming at a time when it was keen to rid itself of the taint left by a series of scandals involving sexual abuse of minors by clerics around the world and mismanagement at its bank.
"Everything will finish today, this was the wish of the Holy See and also had the blessing of the defence lawyers" said La Stampa journalist, Giacomo Galeazzi.
"But what will not finish today is the power struggle, the clash between factions, which is at the origin of Vatileaks," he said.
Earlier this week Gabriele accused the Holy See's police of mistreating him while in custody. Members of the force depicted the butler as a man obsessed with the occult, Masonic lodges and secret services.
Gabriele's lawyer, Cristiana Arru, said she does not plan to appeal the verdict and that in her view the sentence passed on Gabriele was fair.
Speaking just outside the Vatican walls, after visiting Gabriele's family apartment in the Holy City, Arru said "I think I will not appeal this" Arru said.
" It seems to me a fair sentence. I reserve the right to study the formal motivation of the court but I do not, right now, see any reason to appeal it," she added.
Asked if she had any information about a possible papal pardon, Arru said:
"It is up to the supreme pontiff to decide if he is going to grant a pardon and when to grant it. It can be asked for formally but this has not been done because for Paolo what matters most is the personal and delicate relationship that he had personally with the supreme pontiff," Arru said.
The court delivered its verdict after a two-hour deliberation on the last day of the trial. The prosecution had asked for a three-year sentence. The defence had asked that Paolo Gabriele go free.