Father of Pope’s butler insists his son is honest

Andrea Gabriele’s comments in a letter to Italian media yesterday marked the first by relatives of papal butler Paolo Gabriele, who was arrested on 23 May after scores of documents from the papal apartments were found in his Vatican City home. He is accused of aggravated theft and remains the only suspect in the case of leaked Vatican documents, which exposed corruption, infighting and power struggles in the Catholic Church’s highest levels of governance.

While Mr Gabriele defended his son, he hinted that the motivation behind the leaks was to expose wrongdoing for the sake of purifying the church. He said he hoped that Benedict’s call to carry out “the necessary cleaning of the church” is realised.

“Paolo is paying the price first hand for a reality that’s difficult to understand until the motive of what has happened is made public,” he wrote in the letter to Italian TV station Tgcom 24.

The younger Gabriele, a 46-year-old father of three, has been imprisoned in a holding facility located inside the Vatican gendarmes’ barracks since his arrest; he is allowed regular visits by his family and lawyers, and attends Mass weekly.

Many Vatican watchers have seen in the leaks a plot to undermine the authority of Benedict’s deputy, the Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who has been blamed for a host of problems during Benedict’s seven-year papacy. But in one of his last acts before going on holiday on 3 July, Benedict sent a letter to Mr Bertone, lamenting the “unjust criticism” that had been levelled against him and reaffirming his confidence in him.