Court in butler case says some evidence to be reserved for pope

Pope Benedict's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, went on trial on Saturday on charges of aggravated theft in one of the most embarrassing episodes in recent Vatican history.    

The Vatican said the trial, where Gabriele is accused of stealing sensitive papal document and leaking them to the media, started at 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT).    

A group of eight journalists have been allowed into the small courtroom inside the Vatican and will brief other reporters after the end of the first session, which is expected to last up to three hours. Later in the day, the court ruled that the results of a sensitive separate investigation carried out by cardinals for the pope will not be admitted as trial evidence.   

At the first hearing of the long-awaiting trial of Paolo Gabriele, charged with stealing and leaking sensitive papal documents alleging corruption in the Vatican, the court rejected a defense request to include the cardinals' probe.   

It ruled that the trial will be based only on an investigation by a Vatican prosecutor and Vatican police.   

Gabriele, wearing a light grey suit and looking pale but smiling often, did not speak at the first session. He is expected to testify when the trial resumes on October 2.

Gabriele is both a Vatican citizen and resident of a Vatican City apartment (one of 595 citizens of whom 247 are residents). So the Pope is not only Gabriele's former boss, he is also his landlord, his spiritual head as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church and his head of state, not to mention the authority who appointed the prosecutor and the three lay judges who will hear Gabriele's case and decide by a majority if he is guilty.

When it was first published in May, His Holiness became the most-talked-about book in Italy and the Vatican, 273 pages of secrets about one of the most secretive institutions in the world. It included letters from a Vatican official detailing corruption in the awarding of Vatican contracts, finger-pointing about who was to blame for leaking accusations about homosexual liaisons, and the like.

None of the documents threatened the papacy. Most were of interest only to Italians, as they concerned relations between Italy and the Vatican and a few local scandals and personalities. But their very existence and the fact that they were taken from the pope's own desk provoked an unprecedented reaction from the Vatican, with the pope naming a commission of cardinals to investigate alongside the Vatican magistrates.

REUTERS/AP