Pope pardons former butler who leaked docs in Vatican scandal

Pope pardons former butler who leaked docs in Vatican scandal

PanARMENIAN.Net - Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday, December 22 granted his former butler a Christmas pardon for stealing the pontiff's private papers and leaking them to a journalist, one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times, AP reported.

The pope met for 15 minutes with Paolo Gabriele in the prison where the ex-butler was serving his sentence for the theft. Gabriele was subsequently freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lived with his wife and three children.

The Vatican said he would not continue living or working in the Vatican, but that it "intends to offer him the possibility to serenely restart his life together with his family."

The pardon closes a painful and embarrassing chapter for the Vatican, capping a sensational, Hollywood-like scandal that exposed power struggles, intrigue and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons in the highest levels of the Catholic Church.

Gabriele, a 46-year-old father of three, was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found what they called an "enormous" stash of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment. He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal on Oct. 6 and has been serving his 18-month sentence in the Vatican police barracks.

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