A former Vatican employee was arrested in a dramatic sting operation after trying to sell a manuscript by Gian Lorenzo Bernini that he had allegedly stolen from an official archive of the Holy See.
The individual met Mauro Gambetti, the head of administration at St Peter’s Basilica, at the basilica on 27 May in the belief he would be selling him the 18-page manuscript, which details the gold-leaf designs Bernini used to decorate the famed 29m-tall Baldacchino canopy that rises above the basilica’s altar.
However, little did the seller know that Gambetti had secretly teamed up with Vatican investigators as part of an audacious trap. Gambetti handed the seller, who was reportedly accompanied by an unnamed accomplice, a €120,000 cheque in exchange for the 17th-century manuscript. As the seller subsequently left the basilica, Vatican gendarmes swooped in and arrested him.
Named by Italian media outlets as the art historian Alfio Maria Daniele Pergolizzi, the seller is believed to have stolen the manuscript from the archives of the Fabric of St. Peter’s, an institution created in the 16th century to oversee construction of the basilica that now coordinates restoration of the building. Pergolizzi was head of the Fabric’s communications department from 1995 to 2011. He is currently being detained in a Vatican prison and has been questioned by investigators twice.
The promoter of justice, Alessandro Diddi, is due to decide this week whether or not to send Pergolizzi to trial, Vatican News, the state’s official media channel, reports. Pergolizzi could be charged with extortion, fraud and receiving stolen property.
Vatican authorities planned the sting after administrators from St Peter’s Basilica informed Diddi that the 1633 manuscript had gone missing, only to reappear as a photocopy in a 2021 book edited by Pergolizzi.
However, the Dagospia outlet reports that Maria Grazia D’Amelio, a professor at Rome’s Tor Vergata University who authored the book edited by Pergolizzi, claims she never saw any trace of the manuscript at the archives despite visiting it numerous times for research. Pergolizzi told the gendarmes that he had been given the manuscript by Monsignor Vittorino Canciani, a former canon of St Peter’s Basilica who died in 2014.
Silere non possum, a Catholic website that is highly critical of Pope Francis, claimed that Pergolizzi had been denied access to documents that allegedly prove his guilt, adding: “this is a serious violation of fundamental human rights against citizens of foreign states”.