VATICAN CITY – He had the trust of Pope Benedict XVI and the cardinals, monsignors and priests who run the Roman Catholic Church. And because of his privileged position as papal butler, he had access to their deepest secrets: confidential letters, memos, financial reports.

From under Benedict’s nose, Paolo Gabriele used the photocopier in the small office he shared with the two papal secretaries that adjoined the pope’s library, studio and chapel – and, he says, started copying them all. At first he kept the documents to himself. Then he found a journalist he trusted, and the intrigues and injustices he saw around him spread around the world in the gravest Vatican security breach of modern times.

A three-judge Vatican tribunal will decide today whether Gabriele is guilty of aggravated theft, accused of stealing the pope’s private papers and leaking them to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, whose book “His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI’s secret papers” became an immediate blockbuster when it was published in May. Gabriele has pleaded innocent, claiming he never took original documents, though he said he was guilty of “having betrayed the trust of the Holy Father, whom I love as a son would.”