Pope Benedict XVI’s butler Paolo Gabriele spent his entire adult life as a loyal servant in the Vatican before what he saw as the “evil and corruption” around him made him snap.

A married father of three who lives inside the Vatican as one of the tiny state’s 594 citizens, Gabriele was born in Rome and started out as a cleaner in the Secretariat of State – the main administration of the Catholic Church.

Gabriele then worked as part of the domestic staff of the late Pope John Paul II before being promoted in 2006 to the prestigious post of butler to Benedict XVI when Angelo Gugel retired after 30 years on the job.

But he allegedly used his position to steal secret Vatican papers and goes on trial tomorrow.

Along with four women from the Memores Domini religious movement who help the 85-year-old Pope in his daily life and run the papal household, Gabriele was seen as one of the very few lay people who are closest to the Holy Father.

Gabriele accompanied the Pope on his many foreign trips and can be seen in the corners of official photographs, adjusting the Pope’s cloak, holding his umbrella or escorting him on the Popemobile through crowds of faithful.

The 46-year-old, nicknamed ‘Paoletto’, served meals for the Pope and helped the 85-year-old don his robes every day. His wife and children were well known and liked in the tiny community that inhabits the world’s smallest state.

His co-defendant Claudio Sciarpelletti told investigators in one interrogation that he knew about Gabriele’s ‘painful’ childhood, although no further details are provided in court documents.

“He was very pious. He went to the Mass celebrated by the Holy Father every day and prayed a lot,” said one of the four Memores Domini housekeepers.

According to some witnesses, however, all was not well with Gabriele.

Reports in the Italian media also said Gabriele had a reputation for being a bit too talkative, considering the discretion demanded of the post he held.

Investigators asked two psychologists to analyse Gabriele while he was being held in detention and concluded that he was “an impressionable subject able to commit a variety of actions that can damage himself and/or others”.

Paolo Roma, one of the psychologists, said: “Gabriele has a simple intelligence and a fragile personality with paranoid aspects covering up a deep personal insecurity and an unfulfilled desire for consideration and affection.”

The only recorded interview that Gabriele has given was with Gianluigi Nuzzi, the investigative journalist who published the confidential Vatican documents that Gabriele allegedly leaked to him in the book Your Holiness.

Gabriele spoke in the darkness, his voice muffled and his identity hidden in the interview in February – before his arrest on May 23 and the ruling on August 13 to proceed to trial finally made his identification possible.

The butler expressed frustration with a culture of secrecy in the Vatican – from the mysterious disappearance of the daughter of a Vatican employee in 1983 to a quickly-hushed-up double murder and suicide by a Swiss guard in 1998.

“There is a kind of omertà against the truth, not so much because of a power struggle but because of fear, because of caution,” Gabriele said in the interview, using the term for the code of silence of the Sicilian Mafia.

He told Nuzzi he was acting with “around 20 other people” in the Vatican.

“It annoys people when you stick your nose in their dirty laundry,” he said, adding that the leaking of documents was “a gesture of rage” against inaction.

Gabriele comes across in the interview as a deeply religious man who says he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to reveal intrigues behind the Vatican walls so as to help the Pope clear out corruption from the heart of the Catholic Church.

“I think it’s not right when the Church has to rely on structures that obstruct faith,” he said, adding: “When you accuse the Vatican, you are not accusing the Church and you are certainly not accusing the Holy See.”

“There is a lot of hypocrisy, this is the kingdom of hypocrisy,” he said.

Gabriele said he was aware of the consequences of his actions but said the potential to change something in the Vatican was worth the risk.

“Being a witness to truth means being ready to pay the price,” he said.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.