Vatileaks - did the butler act alone?

Pope Benedict XVI’s  butler, Paolo Gabriele, is due to be formally questioned by Vatican prosecutors in the next few days. His lawyers say he has pledged to fully cooperate with the investigation. This raises the spectre that high ranking prelates may soon be implicated.

Associated Press reports that the scandal has tormented the Vatican for months and represents one of the greatest breaches of trust and security for the pope in recent memory.

Pope Benedict wants to get to the bottom of the scandal in order to heal the breach and re-establish a sense of trust among the faithful, according to the Vatican’s undersecretary of state, Archbishop Angelo Becciu.

“I consider the publication of stolen letters to be an unprecedentedly grave immoral act,” Becciu told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. “It’s not just that the pope’s papers were stolen, but that people who turned to him as the vicar of Christ have had their consciences violated.”

Benedict’s personal butler was arrested and accused of theft after documents he had no business having were found in his Vatican City apartment. Few think the butler acted alone.

The motivation for the leaks remains uncertain. Some commentators say they appear designed to discredit Benedict’s second-in-command, the secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Others say they are aimed at undermining the Vatican’s efforts to become more financially transparent. Still others say they aim to show the weakness of the  85-year-old Benedict in running the Church.