A Vatican court Saturday sentenced the pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, to 18 months in prison for leaking confidential documents to a journalist in one of the most serious breaches of vaunted Vatican secrecy in modern history.
The court found Gabriele guilty of theft and remanded him to house arrest. A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Saturday that it was “very likely" that the pope would pardon Gabriele. Before the verdict, Gabriele told the court that “he felt the strong conviction deep inside to have acted exclusively for love, a visceral love, for the church" and the pope.
