Pope pardons former butler who leaked papers

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI granted his former butler a Christmas pardon yesterday, forgiving him for stealing and leaking his private papers in one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times.

After the 15-minute jailhouse meeting, Paolo Gabriele was freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lives with his wife and three children. The Vatican said he couldn't continue living or working there, but said it would find him housing and a job elsewhere soon.

"This is a paternal gesture toward someone with whom the pope for many years shared daily life," said a statement from the Vatican secretariat of state.

The pardon closes a painful and embarrassing chapter for the Vatican, capping a sensational, Hollywood-like scandal that exposed power struggles, intrigue and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons in the highest levels of the Catholic Church.

Gabriele, 46, was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found what they called an "enormous" stash of papal documents in his apartment. He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal on Oct. 6 and has been serving an 18-month sentence in the Vatican police barracks.

He told Vatican investigators he gave the documents to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the 85-year-old pope wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican and believed that exposing it would put the church back on the right track.

During the trial, Gabriele testified that he loved the pope "as a son loves his father" and that he never meant to hurt the pontiff or the church.

None of the leaked documents threatened the papacy. Most were of interest only to Italians. Their main aim appeared to be to discredit Benedict's trusted No. 2, the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.