A Vatican court on Saturday handed imposed a two-month suspended sentence on Claudio Sciarpelletti for his role in what is being called the Vatileaks scandal.

The suspended sentence is set to last five years, said Giuseppe Dalla Torre, the presiding judge in the case.

The court ruled that Sciarpelletti had helped Pope Benedict XVI's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, leak sensitive Vatican documents to the press. Sciarpelletti said he played no part in the leak.

Gabriele is serving 18 months in jail for stealing the documents, saying it was an attempt to expose corruption in the Catholic Church.

The information contained in the documents made its way into a book by an Italian journalist about alleged corruption at the Vatican.

mz/ipj (Reuters, AP, dpa)