Pope Benedict XVI’s former butler said he was innocent of theft but guilty of abusing the Pope’s trust at his Vatican trial yesterday, where he also claimed he was mistreated in jail.
Paolo Gabriele took the stand at his historic trial accused of stealing secret memos that revealed intrigue and fraud allegations and leaking them to a journalist, in what he described as a bid to battle “evil and corruption” within the Vatican.
“Concerning the accusation of aggravated theft, I declare myself innocent,” Gabriele said in his first public comments since his sensational arrest in May.
“I feel guilty for having betrayed the trust put in me by the Holy Father, whom I love like a son,” he said, referring to a son’s love for his father.
Gabriele also alleged he was mistreated during his 53-day detention in a Vatican prison, claiming he was held for up to three weeks at the start of his incarceration in a tiny cell where the lights were on 24 hours a day.
The Vatican immediately ordered an investigation into the claims. A father of three who is now under house arrest, the 46-year-old faces up to four years in jail if he is convicted on charges of aggravated theft.
Although he has admitted leaking the documents, his confession is not legally considered definitive proof for a conviction because he could have lied to protect others and there is no chance of a plea bargain under Vatican law. Yesterday the ex-butler told judges that he had been driven to act because he believed the pope was being “manipulated.”
“Inevitably my role allowed me to see many situations from both sides – from what the people thought and what the powers that be thought,” he said.
“What really shocked me was when I would sit down for lunch with the Holy Father and sometimes the Pope asked about things that he should have been informed on,” he said, adding: “I was the layman closest to the Holy Father.”
“It was then that I became firmlconvinced of how easy it was to manipulate a person with such enormous powers,” Gabriele told the court. The trial will continue today.