Vatican employee is arrested after police allege he stole priceless Bernini manuscript from archives and tried to sell it

A former Vatican employee has been arrested after police say he stole a 391-year-old manuscript from an archive, then tried to sell it.

The man, identified by Italian media as Alfio Maria Daniele Pergolizzi, is accused of stealing a 17th-century manuscript by Gian Lorenzo Bernini that includes plans for the decorative gilded features of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Alessandro Diddi, promoter of justice for the Vatican, will decide this week if the man will be formally indicted, Reuters reports.

Pergolizzi previously worked as the head of communications at the Fabric of St. Peter, which conserves and maintains the Basilica, The Art Newspaper reports.

The man was arrested in a sting operation last month when Mauro Gambietti, head of administration at the Basilica, teamed up with Vatican investigators and met with the former employee.

The former Fabric employee then “sold” Gambietti the manuscript for $130,000 — but Vatican police swept in to arrest him after he left the meeting, according to The Art Newspaper.

While authorities say he stole the manuscript, Pergolizzi says he was given the manuscript by the late Monsignor Vittorino Canciani, a former canon of St Peter’s Basilica.

The manuscript is now back with the Vatican, Reuters reports.

This is not the first time a reported theft has rocked the Vatican.

In 2017, Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi published a document that authorities claimed was stolen from a locked cabinet in the Vatican.

The document, Fittipaldi claimed, pertained to Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old who went missing in Rome in 1983. He said the document was written by a cardinal and listed expenses for Emanuela’s accommodations in London between 1983 and 1997.

The same journalist was also prosecuted and cleared by an Italian court for publishing financial documents stolen from the Vatican, a scandal known as “Vatileaks.”