Vatican rules Pope’s butler must stand trial

Pope Benedict XVI’s former butler and another Vatican employee must stand trial for stealing and leaking confidential papers in the latest scandal to afflict the Catholic Church, a magistrate has ruled.Paolo Gabriele, who was arrested in May on suspicion of stealing secret documents from the pope’s office and leaking them to journalists, was accused of “aggravated theft” on Monday.Judge Piero Bonnet also charged Claudio Sciarpelletti, an analyst and programmer in the Vatican state secretariat, with complicity.Sciarpelletti’s name had not been disclosed before.Gabriele risks up to six years in prison. The Vatican has said the trial will not take place until October at the earliest.The 46-year-old butler was arrested during an investigation into the leak of private papal documents to the media. He was held for 53 days in a Vatican cell before being put under house arrest in July to await the judge’s decision.The Vatican said after his arrest it had found documents and copying equipment in Gabriele’s home, revelations which shocked the close-knit Holy See community and saddened the aged pontiff.Legal experts said they doubted Gabriele would get the maximum six year jail sentence.“Gabriele has a clean record, so the final punishment should be lower than the maximum of six years,” said Maurizio Bellacosa, professor of criminal law at the LUISS University in Rome.