Holy See: Cardinals turn on one another

The “Vatileaks” scandal has exposed the Vatican as a true “nest of vipers,” said Michael Day in The Independent (U.K.). Italian reporter Gianluigi Nuzzi was given access to leaked documents that show sleazy efforts to evade taxes and “widespread nepotism and corruption.” The publication of Nuzzi’s book, His Holiness, means there’s now no end in sight “for the PR disasters that have blighted the reign” of Pope Benedict XVI. The book is highly explosive, said Massimo Razzi in La Repubblica (Italy), even though it relies mostly on a single source, the “Deep Throat of the Vatican.” That source’s grudge is not against the pope, who is portrayed as weak but well-meaning, but rather against the pope’s right-hand man, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See’s influential secretary of state. In his quest to consolidate power for himself and his cronies, Bertone made many enemies at the Vatican. The picture that emerges is of powerful groups fighting it out for control beneath an “almost absent” pope, who is fully “under the thumb of the powerful cardinal.”

The intrigue in the Vatican reads “like an Agatha Christie novel,” said Paolo Rodari in Il Foglio (Italy). As soon as excerpts from the book began to be published last week, the Vatican started looking for someone to punish. First, the powerful head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was abruptly fired, ostensibly for failing to prevent leaks of financial documents—but really, insiders say, because his efforts to root out corruption were rubbing certain cardinals the wrong way. Then, in a typical mystery-story twist, the Vatican “announced that the butler did it.” The pope’s personal valet, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested with a sheaf of stolen documents in his possession.

Most Vatican watchers believe that the valet is just a go-between, “a simple soul” and a scapegoat, said Marco Politi in Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy). He almost certainly believed he was helping the pope by cooperating with those out to oust Bertone. The real story is much bigger than the role and motivations of a papal valet, however. “Every plot twist reveals the weakness of this pope, who is a theologian and a writer, not an administrator.” We are in the realm of “Shakespearean tragedy,” with the pope cast as an idealistic monarch who has no idea how viciously his vassals are plotting against one another.

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And this is just Act 1, said Alberto Melloni in Corriere della Sera (Italy). The Vatican is in panic mode. There is “a feeling that something more will explode, with catastrophic results.” Cardinals are running their own investigations, while the pope is rumored to have an inner circle of five trusted advisers spying for him. “An orgy of revenge and retaliation can no longer be prevented.”