VATICAN CITY – The Vatican said Friday that its police is holding a suspect in connection with the “illegal” possession of classified documents.
The announcement by papal spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi came a day after the board of the Holy See’s bank, the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR, unanimously voted to dismiss its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, in a decision reportedly linked to the leaking of Vatican documents.
It was not immediately clear whether Friday’s arrest was directly linked to the IOR controversy.
The identification of the person, who Lombardi did not name, follows an investigation by the Vatican’s Gendarmerie corps into the leaking of several documents, including confidential letters written to Pope Benedict XVI.
In a report posted on its Internet site, the daily Il Foglio identified the person as a member of the pontiff’s domestic staff, a man named Paolo Gabriele.
The Vatican had denounced as “criminal” a book released in Italy this week that contained several leaked documents, some of which appeared to indicate a power struggle inside the Holy See.
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