Italian police have donned priests’ garments in a ruse designed to catch two suspected blackmailers.
The schemers were demanding money from a senior Catholic priest who had been indiscrete enough to engage in erotic gay telephone conversations which the men had taped.
The men threatened to make the tapes public unless the priest paid up.
Gregorio Vitali, 70, allegedly gave €100,000 to the blackmailers. But when the men upped the ante to €250,000, he notified the police.
The police organised their sting operation disguised as priests, and arrested two Romanian men. The police also seized a mobile phone used to record the sexy conversations.
The Romanians, named as Flavius Savu, 33, and Florin Tanasie, 22, had allegedly threatened to give the tapes to an Italian television show, Le Iene (The Hyenas) which specialises in investigations and satire.
The police are now seeking to establish if the men had any accomplices.
They are also interested in finding out how the priest came by such a large amount of money. The €100,000 had been handed over by an intermediary, namely a priest who is the private secretary to a cardinal who is a senior member of the Holy See’s finance watchdog, which is charged with fighting money-laundering.
Father Vitali has left his post in Vigevano, in the Lombardy area of northern Italy, on the grounds of ill health, according to La Stampa newspaper.
