Paolo Gabriele, the man behind Vatileaks changed his version of events during an interview on the Italian TV station La7. While originally he was saying that he had acted alone, now he is saying that he had at least 20 collaborators helping him.

The former valet of the Pope said that “the Pope wants to clean up, but is having difficulties.” Gabriele said that he was helped by others “who, like me, want to contribute to transparency.”

Italian newspapers have reported that about 20 other people are still under investigation in a Vatican magistrate’s inquiry into the “Vatileaks” scandal. Vatican officials denied that there were 20 suspects.

Gianluigi Nuzzi, the Italian journalist at the centre of the “Vatileaks” said that no cardinal furnished him with confidential documents. This goes against what he had said earlier when he stated that he had received some papers “from those who wrote them.”

That claim seemed to point to ranking Vatican officials, but now Nuzzi has denied that any of his sources are cardinals.

Vatican Radio recalls Pope’s guidelines for political activism

The Pope’s prayer intentions for the month of September 2012 include the petition that “politicians may always act with honesty, integrity and love for the truth.” Vatican Radio said that the Pope is referring to a 2012 address he made during which he referred to the moral responsibilities of political leaders.

In that talk to the Council for the Laity, the Pope said that the Church “pass moral judgments even in matters relating to politics, whenever the fundamental rights of man or the salvation of souls requires it.”

It is the role of the laity, he said, to use those moral judgments as the basis for action in the secular world while stressing that it is also “the duty of the laity to participate actively in political life, in a manner consistently in accordance with the Church’s teaching, bringing their well-founded reasons and high ideals into the democratic debate, and into the search for a broad consensus among all those who care about the defence of life and freedom, the safeguarding of truth and the good of the family, solidarity with the needy and the crucial search for the common good.”

Anglican bishop warns European court

Anglican Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, retired Bishop of Rochester, has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to protect Christians from militant secularists who want to impose “an-other inhuman ideology” that suppresses religious groups.

He said: “The abuse of human rights by secular governments in Central and Eastern Europe is all too recent… The new Human Rights agenda must respect Judeo-Christian values if it is not to become another inhuman ideology imposing restrictions on individuals.”

Bishop Nazir-Ali made his plea in connection with a case brought by several Christians who have lost their jobs because they refused to perform tasks that violated their Christian beliefs.

Conversions lead to arrest

Three hundred villagers in central Laos were converted following the preaching of a Christian leader. He has now been arrested and the villagers are being threatened with expulsion from the village unless they renounce Christianity.

The arrest took place in Bolikhamsai Province.

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)