‘NSA spied on the Vatican as cardinals elected Pope’

US secret services allegedly eavesdropped on cardinals before the conclave in March to elect a new pope, Italian weekly magazine Panorama has claimed.

“The National Security Agency wiretapped the pope,” the magazine said, accusing the US of listening in to telephone calls to and from the Vatican, including the accommodation housing cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio before he was elected Pope Francis.

The allegations follow a report on surveillance website Cryptome which said the US intercepted 46m telephone calls in Italy in Dec 2012 and early Jan 2013.