Vatican police also ordered psychological examinations of Gabriele during his 53 days in custody, which concluded he was “an impressionable subject able to commit a variety of actions that can damage himself and/or others.”
The only recorded interview that Gabriele has given was in February with Gianluigi Nuzzi, the investigative journalist who published the leaks.
Gabriele spoke in the darkness, his voice muffled and his identity hidden.
The butler expressed frustration with a culture of secrecy in the Vatican — from the mysterious disappearance of the daughter of a Vatican employee in 1983 to a quickly hushed-up double murder and suicide by a Swiss guard in 1998.
“There is a kind of omerta against the truth, not so much because of a power struggle but because of fear, because of caution,” Gabriele said in the interview, using the term for the code of silence of the Sicilian mafia.
“It annoys people when you stick your nose in their dirty laundry,” he said, adding that the leaking of documents was “a gesture of rage” against inaction.
He told Nuzzi there were “around 20” like-minded people in the Vatican.
“It annoys people when you stick your nose in their dirty laundry,” he said, adding that the leaking of documents was “a gesture of rage” against inaction.
“There is a lot of hypocrisy, this is the kingdom of hypocrisy,” he said.
Gabriele said he was aware of the consequences of his actions but said the potential to change something in the Vatican was worth the risk.
“Being a witness to truth means being ready to pay the price,” he said.
Gabriele is being tried together with Claudio Sciarpelletti, a Vatican computer technician at the Vatican who is accused of abetting his crime.
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