Vatican Leaks

The story of the Vatican leaks – the Pope’s butler leaks personal letters and other documents for the Pope to a journalist who writes a book revealing the leaks – is curious in how it’s been covered, from the charging of the butler a few months ago, to his being convicted (any surprise there?) this week, to his expected pardon in the next few days (the church is, after all, about forgiveness). In all of the stories I’ve read about the scandal, the scandal is not in what the documents reveal about the Vatican but rather in the leaks themselves. What the documents reveal is “the intrigue, petty infighting and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons that plague the Vatican’s secretive universe,” a line only given in passing in some of the stories and not at all in others. Let me repeat what the documents reveal: “the intrigue, petty infighting and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons that plague the Vatican’s secretive universe.” Why is that not the story? Could we get more details? How widespread and far up does this intrigue, infighting, corruption, and homosexual liaisons go? What did the Pope know, and when did he know it? When John Dean made public the existence of the Nixon tapes, it was the tapes – and the crimes they exposed – that was the news. Why aren’t the Vatican documents – and the crimes they expose – the story here? Oh, right, it’s the Vatican, where keeping what goes on within the secretive universe secret is sacred. Sorry.