Home // October 22-26 2012 > Former papal butler begins 18-month sentence

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Former papal butler begins 18-month sentence

Published: October 25, 2012

Paolo Gabriele, the pope's former butler who was found guilty of aggravated theft, is to be transferred from house arrest to a Vatican prison cell to begin his 18-month sentence, reports the Catholic News Service.

Because the Vatican's prosecutor decided not to file an appeal, Gabriele would immediately begin serving his prison sentence by order of a Vatican court, said Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman.

"The order will be carried out before the end of the day," he said yesterday.

Gabriele, who worked at Pope Benedict XVI's side as his assistant since 2006, will not be allowed to seek any employment at the Vatican in the future, the spokesman said.

Gabriele's violation of the trust of the pope and the privacy of so many people underlines his "incompatibility" with employment at the Vatican, he added.

While the Vatican has begun the necessary paperwork for terminating Gabriele's employment, the Vatican will proceed "with humanity and attention," Lombardi told Catholic News Service, saying it will take into consideration the fact that the 46-year-old Italian was supporting a family with three children in an apartment on Vatican property.

He will be detained in one of the recently refurbished prison cells inside the Vatican police barracks.

FULL STORY Former papal butler begins 18-month sentence in Vatican prison cell (CNS)

 

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Recent Comments

  1. I continue to be struck by the stark dissonance this story reveals; how can we operate as a church while at the same time our leaders function within the mindset and processes of a sovereign state?
    What other 'church' has the temporal powers and apparatus to arrest, detain, prosecute, judge, sentence, imprison and possibly 'pardon' a person? No others, I hope.
    Why must our church continue to hang on to these vestiges of 'statehood'?
    Time, I say, for the Church to divest itself of these temporal powers and apparatus by renouncing its hold on this city-state and offically cede it to Italy.
    The response to the activies of this misguided employee, the butler, would then have been provided completely by the Italian authorities. Just as would be the case if such criminal activites occurred anywhere else in the world; even a Roman suburb just outside the Vatican walls.
    I want my church to be a church, the people of God; and to not have its Head Office distracted by trying to operate as a quaint, temporal principality.

    Posted By: Mark

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