Butler ‘had
thousands of Pope’s
documents’

Officers gave evidence in the trial of Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s once-trusted butler who faces four years in prison if convicted of aggravated theft for stealing papal documents and leaking them to a journalist.

The final four witnesses were heard and closing arguments are set for Saturday, when a verdict by the three-judge Vatican panel is expected.

Inspector Silvano Carli said that of the hundreds of thousands of documents seized from Gabriele’s home, about 1,000 were of interest since they were original or photocopied Vatican documents.

Some documents came from the pope’s office, some carried the processing codes of the secretariat of state, others originated in various Vatican congregations “and some documents concerned the total privacy and private life of the Holy Father,” said police officer Stefano De Santis.

He said some of the originals carried the pope’s handwriting with a note to destroy them written in German. Some were reproduced in journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi’s book His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI’s secret papers.

Prosecutors have said Gabriele, a devout 46-year-old father of three, confessed to leaking copies of the documents because he wanted to expose the “evil and corruption” in the church to help put it back on the right path.

Gabriele admits he betrayed the Pope’s trust, but he nevertheless pleaded innocent to the charge of aggravated theft.

An Italian man eluded Vatican security and scaled the 42ft (130m) high dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican to protest over Italian government and EU policies. The man, said to be the owner of a beach resort, refused appeals from government ministers to come down.

He put up a banner saying “Help! Enough Monti!”, referring to Italian Premier Mario Monti’s tough austerity measures and economic reforms.