ROME (AP) — The Vatican secretary of state has intervened personally to shed light on one of the most sensational Vatican scandals of recent times: The 1998 murder of the Swiss Guard commander and his wife, purportedly by a disgruntled younger Swiss Guardsman who then took his own life. Cardinal Pietro Parolin asked the Vatican City State tribunal to pay “particular attention” to the request by the mother of the accused guardsman to have access to the confidential court files of the investigation that was officially archived in 1999. Parolin cited the “understandable desire that animates the relatives to know the details of a particularly painful event.” That’s according to a March 30 letter from the cardinal to the mother’s lawyers.
