Pope orders Spanish priest in 'Vatileaks' case freed from jail

Pope Francis has commuted the jail sentence of a Spanish priest who was convicted of leaking Vatican documents and ordered that he be released from jail, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

Monsigor Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda was sentenced to 18 months in a Vatican jail last July at the end of a trial dubbed "Vatileaks II".

The pontiff granted Vallejo Balda, 55, a Christmas-time clemency after he served half of his 18-month sentence, the Vatican said. He would leave the employ of the Vatican and be put under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Astorga in his native Spain. It said he would be under "provisional liberty" for the rest of his sentence, without elaborating. It gave no further details.

The leaked papers were cited in books published in 2015, that alleged corruption in the Catholic Church. The books, by journalists Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi, were based on leaked materials and exposed waste and financial mismanagement in the Church.

A former colleague of the priest was given a 10-month suspended sentence.

Vallejo Balda has made no public comment on the latest developments.

The original Vatileaks episode saw the last Pope's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, sentenced to 18 months in jail in 2012 after being found guilty of stealing sensitive documents from the pontiff's desk.

He served nearly three months of his sentence under house arrest in the Vatican before Pope Benedict visited him and personally pardoned him.

The Vatican has only two prison cells but it can ask Italy to house its prisoners under the terms of a 1929 treaty.