Sunday, May 27, 2012

The Butler Did It

Washington Post:
An already sordid scandal over leaked Vatican documents took a Hollywood-like turn Saturday with confirmation that the pope’s own butler had been arrested after documents he had no business having were found in his Vatican City apartment.
The detention of butler Paolo Gabriele, one of the few members of the papal household, capped one of the most convulsive weeks in recent Vatican history and threw the Holy See into chaos as it enters a critical phase in its efforts to show the world it’s serious about complying with international norms on financial transparency.
The tumult began with the publication last weekend of a book of leaked Vatican documents detailing power struggles, political intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of Catholic Church governance. It peaked with the inglorious ouster on Thursday of the president of the Vatican bank. And it concluded with confirmation Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI’s own butler was the alleged mole feeding documents to Italian journalists in an apparent bid to discredit the pontiff’s No. 2.
“If you wrote this in fiction you wouldn’t believe it,” said Carl Anderson, a member of the board of the Vatican bank which contributed to the tumult with its no-confidence vote in its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. “No editor would let you put it in a novel.”
Carl Anderson.  Nobody is an unaccountable insider more than Carl Anderson.  As the Church declines in the developed world, issues like this won't attract adherents among the young.  It is hard to notice a connection between the Vatican and the itinerant carpenter from two thousand years ago.  This will end up being swept under the rug.  There's a lot of stuff under that rug.

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