Slashdot Mirror
The Pope Criminalizes Leaks
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Pope Francis overhauled the laws that govern the Vatican City State on Thursday, criminalizing leaks of Vatican information and specifically listing sexual violence, prostitution and possession of child pornography as crimes against children that can be punished by up to 12 years in prison. But without the leaks, how would we find out about those crimes against children? Many of the new provisions were necessary to bring the city state's legal system up to date after the Holy See signed international treaties, such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Others were necessary to comply with international norms to fight money-laundering, part of the Vatican's push toward financial transparency. One new crime stands out, though, as an obvious response to the leaks of papal documents last year that represented one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times. Paolo Gabriele, the butler for then-Pope Benedict XVI, was tried and convicted by a Vatican court of stealing Benedict's personal papers and giving them to an Italian journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi. Using the documents, Nuzzi published a blockbuster book on the petty turf wars, bureaucratic dysfunction and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons that afflict the highest levels of Catholic Church governance. Gabriele, who said he wanted to expose the 'evil and corruption' that plagued the Holy See, was convicted of aggravated theft and sentenced to 18 months in the Vatican's police barracks."
Its not even neccesarily the case for it to be the sort of thing that topples popes. It simply needs to be recorded that he was *aware* of specific allegations and refused to act.
In many ways you can abuse a child simply by refusing to intervene when a child is being abused. As adults we have a responsibility to *all* children. I truly believe that.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. - John 3:20
just sayin'
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I think the popular myth was that it was the Catholic church who was behind the killings, when, apparently, it was the Spanish government.