VATICAN CITY — A computer expert convicted along with the pope’s former butler in the Holy See’s leaks scandal has dropped his appeal, the Vatican said Saturday, signaling an end of sorts to a case that convulsed the Vatican for the past year.

Claudio Sciarpelletti was convicted Nov. 10 of aiding and abetting Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s trusted butler who himself was convicted of stealing the pontiff’s private papers and leaking them to a journalist in one of the Vatican’s gravest security breaches in recent times.

“This closes a precise part” of the case, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Saturday. “Whether there is particular research going on, I have no current information to give.”

Sciarpelletti, a technical expert in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, had initially appealed his Nov. 10 conviction. But Sciarpelletti subsequently dropped the appeal, perhaps after considering the “benevolent” two-month suspended sentence he received from the Vatican tribunal, Lombardi said.

Gabriele is serving an 18-month sentence in a Vatican jail after being convicted of aggravated theft. Lombardi had initially indicated a papal pardon was “concrete, likely” but later backed off.

Front Section, Pages 16 on 12/02/2012