Vatican court convicts man in leaks case

A Vatican court has convicted a Holy See computer technician of helping the former papal butler in the theft of confidential documents and given him a two-month suspended sentence.

Claudio Sciarpelletti, an Italian who is a computer programme analyst in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, had testified earlier today that he played no part in helping to spirit out confidential documents in a scandal involving alleged corruption in the Vatican bureaucracy.

The Pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted last month in a separate trial for the theft of the documents and is serving a 18-month prison sentence in Vatican City.