In fact, the next act in the process, will be the Nov. 5th trial against the Secretary of State computer technician Claudio Sciarpelletti, accused of aiding and abetting.
Meanwhile Paolo Gabriele, Benedict XVI's former butler, may serve his term in the Vatican and has not been convicted, as it seemed, from holding public office.
A papal pardon "is possible and probable, but it is not possible to predict the time nor methods."
The October 6 judgment was published in full today, in which the Vatican Court condemned Gabriele to one year and six months imprisonment. The document confirms what was already pronounced on the same day, but also reveals some details. For example, the judges term "reprehensible", the indications given to Gabriele by his "spiritual father," Don Giovanni Luzi.
According to the testimony of the accused himself, he was advised to deny all responsibility for the leaking of confidential documents and to "wait for the circumstances and not to admit responsibility unless it was the Holy Father to ask me in person". But with the theft and distribution of documents Gabriele has done a "detrimental damage to the Vatican into the person of the Pope, the rights of the Holy See, the whole Catholic Church and Vatican City State."
Instead, there is no evidence to confirm a "criminal intent to steal" the check of 100 thousand euros payable to the Pope, or the "alleged gold" nugget and antique edition of the Aeneid, found in Gabriele's house.
The names of two other Cardinals emerge in the judgment - as well as those of Angelo Comastri and Paolo Sardi, already mentioned during the trial - which led to the court's decision "not to accept" the defense request seeking the testimony of Cardinals Ivan Dias and Georges Marie Martin Cottier by the Cardinal's Commission created by the Pope to investigate the leaks. This is because it is "beyond the Court's jurisdiction."
Regarding the names made during the investigation and the trial, while the judgment states that "there is no evidence of complicity and collusion" with others, it adds that "further investigations are in progress on the existence of others believed responsible in the leaking of confidential documents. "
"As for the possible existence of a determiner or instigator of the crime," as indicated by claims made by Gabriele, "I was influenced by environmental circumstances" and "within the staff I had contact with many people," the judgment states that this suggestion " does not have an objective value, ie with reference to an external force that has led to the criminal action. That term has instead a subjective value, in the sense that from the multiplicity of people whom he had the opportunity to meet or who sought an encounter with him allowed him to gather information on the environment, which would eventually lead to a subjective, but erroneous, conclusion of having to do something to defend the Holy Father and the Church". Thus it is "understandable that Gabriele had contact with many people, for reasons of office, nor to underestimate the fact that, due to his proximity to the Holy Father, he was sought out by others".
The sentence, finally, notes that "the accused made some contradictions, for example, where he claims to have only two copies (one given to Nuzzi and the other his confessor), whereas among the many documents a third copy was also found during the search on his apartment and confiscated by the Vatican, or where he claims to have made photocopies during office hours, while during the trial, he stated : "I clarify that there was no pre-established time."