ROME – Paolo Gabriele, the Vatican butler who was convicted of stealing and leaking Pope Benedict XVI’s private papers in 2012, has died. Vatican News, the Holy See’s media portal, said Gabriele died Tuesday after a long, undisclosed illness. Gabriele was arrested in May 2012 after Vatican police found what they called an “enormous” stash of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment that he had stolen from the papal apartments. He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal and served a few months of his 18-month sentence in the Vatican police barracks before Benedict pardoned him at Christmas 2012. The Gabriele scandal was believed to have played at least a small part in Benedict's eventual decision to resign as pope two months later.