Before the verdict, Mr. Gabriele addressed the court and told the three judges, “I am not a thief.”

Speaking with little emotion in his voice, Mr. Gabriele said that “he felt the strong conviction deep inside to have acted exclusively for love, a visceral love, for the church” and the pope.

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In depositions to Vatican court officials, Mr. Gabriele had said he acted in the interests of the pope, whom he believed was not adequately informed about the misdeeds that the former butler said were flourishing within the Vatican. He told officials investigating the crime he wanted to bring the corruption to light so that it would be cleaned up.

For several months, beginning in November, Mr. Gabriele gave a number of documents to a journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who published many of them in the book “His Holiness: the Secret Papers of Pope Benedict XVI.” The most embarrassing revelations pointed to alleged misdeeds within the Vatican’s administration and alleged financial mismanagement at its chief financial institutions.

Two weeks after the book was published in May, Mr. Gabriele was arrested when hundreds of photocopied documents were found in his apartment inside Vatican City, where he lives with his wife and their three children. Mr. Gabriele spent nearly two months in a holding cell at the Vatican before being released to house arrest.

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The trial lasted less than a week and focused the attention of the world’s media onto the world’s smallest — and most secretive — city-state.

“It’s a good sentence, a balanced sentence,” said Mr. Gabriele’s lawyer, Cristiana Arru. Mr. Gabriele has three days to appeal the sentence.

A Vatican computer expert has also been indicted and is accused of aiding and abetting Mr. Gabriele, and his trial is expected to begin soon.

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During a briefing to reporters Saturday afternoon, Father Lombardi said the investigation into the leaks and possible other charges against Mr. Gabriele and others had not been formally closed, though the investigations had not turned up anything to suggest “collaboration or complicity” by anyone else.

In making his decision on a possible pardon, the pope would probably consider the results of a commission of cardinals that he had entrusted to carry out a separate, confidential investigation.

But Father Lombardi could not say “when or how” a pardon might be granted. He would also not speculate on whether Mr. Gabriele would remain an employee of the Vatican. “That is another chapter,” he said.