VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict’s former butler went on trial on Saturday for using his intimate access to the pope’s desk to steal and leak explosive documents in what he said was an attempt to clean up corruption in the Vatican.

The 46-year-old Paolo Gabriele, who served the pope his meals and helped him dress, was being tried along with a Vatican computer expert in the city state’s little-used tribunal, a small, wood-panelled room with a papal emblem on its ceiling.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, went on trial on Saturday for one of the most embarrassing episodes in recent Vatican history.

The trial of the 46-year-old man who served the pope his meals and helped him dress began at 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) in the Vatican’s little-used tribunal, a small room with rich paneled wood and a papal emblem on its ceiling.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, goes on trial on Saturday in one of the most embarrassing episodes in recent Vatican history.

The trial of the 46-year-old man who served the pope his meals and helped him dress is due to start at 9:30 a.m. (4.30 p.m. EDT) in the Vatican’s little-used tribunal, a small room with rich paneled wood and a papal emblem on its ceiling.

VATICAN CITY, Sept 27 (Reuters) – The Vatican has certainly
seen more sensational trials in its long history. The
Inquisition ordered Galileo to recant his theory that the earth
revolves around the sun, and philosopher Giordano Bruno was
burned at the stake for heresy.

But even those cases, both in the 17th century, did not
involve a breach of trust by a papal aide – the issue at the
core of this Saturday’s trial of papal butler Paolo Gabriele for
stealing and leaking the pontiff’s personal papers.

ROME (Reuters) – An ancient Coptic papyrus whose scribe quotes Jesus referring to “my wife” is the first clear recorded statement of a claim that he was married, the Harvard scholar who unveiled the 1,700-year-old fragment said on Wednesday.

But Karen King, Professor at Harvard Divinity School, said the landmark discovery of the fragment still provided no definitive historical answer to the question of whether Jesus had a spouse.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A Vatican scandal will get an unusually public airing next week when the butler who served the pope’s meals and helped him dress goes on trial for leaking Benedict’s private papers in the hope of cleaning up what he saw as “evil and corruption everywhere in the Church”.

The case, which led to the most serious crisis of Benedict’s papacy, involves the disclosure of sensitive documents alleging corruption in the Vatican and pointing to a power struggle at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Pope Benedict urged Arab leaders on Sunday at a huge open-air mass in Lebanon to work for reconciliation in a Middle East riven by Syria’s civil war and blazing with fury over a film mocking the Muslim Prophet Mohammad.

“May God grant to your country, to Syria and to the Middle East, the gift of peaceful hearts, the silencing of weapons and the cessation of all violence,” the pope said in a prayer after a mass that organizers said was attended by 350,000 people.

BEIRUT, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Pope Benedict urged multi-faith
Lebanon on Saturday to be a model of religious peace for the
Middle East, as a civil war raged in neighbouring Syria,
deepening sectarian divisions.

“Lebanon is called, now more than ever, to be an example,”
he told political and religious leaders on the second day of a
visit that coincided with violent protests across the Muslim
world against a U.S.-made film insulting Islam.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Pope Benedict urged multi-faith Lebanon on Saturday to be a model of peace and religious coexistence for the Middle East, which he called a turbulent region that “seems to endure interminable birth pangs”.

The pope, on the second day of a visit clouded by war in neighboring Syria and protests across the Muslim world, told a gathering of Lebanese political, religious and cultural leaders that religious freedom was a basic right for all people.