Video shown at a Vatican news conference showed workers preparing the Sistine Chapel for the secretive conclave.
Following Gabriele's conviction by a Vatican court, officials said he was likely to be pardoned by the pontiff.
He managed to find and meet the Pope as an eight-year-old after sneaking away from a Vatican tour group.
Last year, the Pope sent his first tweet from a Vatican account to launch the Holy See's news information portal.
Davide Cito, a Vatican adviser and professor of canonical law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.
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The pope's former butler was convicted by a Vatican court for stealing papal letters that offered a glimpse at the disarray.
Last year, the Pope sent his first tweet last year from a Vatican account to launch the Holy See's news information portal.
The pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted in a Vatican court last year on charges of leaking private papers from the Vatican.
Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, dismissed the claims as false and defamatory.
Pope Francis chose eight cardinals and a bishop who between them represent nearly every continent, and only one of whom is currently a Vatican official.
Leuco said he got a WhatsApp message from a Vatican official who said that the Pope had read his column and wanted to know the journalist's email address.
In the inevitable comparisons with his predecessor, Benedict XVI, some will point to the new pontiff's credentials as a local bishop, rather than a Vatican insider.
But a Vatican spokesman said he does not believe the pope will go on Thursday to Castel Gandolfo, the summer papal residence where Benedict is staying.
As for the pope, a Vatican spokesman says he will likely retire to a monastery, where he will spend his time focused on prayer and reflection.
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Gabriele was arrested in May, following a Vatican investigation into how the pope's private documents appeared in the book "Sua Santita" ("His Holiness"), by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.
Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said at a news conference.
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The movie was to have been shown at a Vatican-sponsored film festival earlier this month, but Gibson pulled the movie because he wanted to re-edit parts of the film.
The willingness by Francis to dispense with tradition was interpreted by a Vatican spokesman as a sign he will be willing to chart his own path in other ways.
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The other is the disgraced Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who stood down as leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland last month and faces a Vatican inquiry into his sexual conduct.
In 2010, the Holy See's top two banking officials came under scrutiny in a money laundering inquiry that resulted in millions of euros being seized from a Vatican bank account.
Gabriele, a Vatican citizen, has already spent five months since his arrest last May in detention or under house arrest, so in theory he has another 13 months to serve.
Benedict will begin his retirement in the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo before he withdraws to a monastery being built for him in Vatican City, a Vatican spokesman has said.
If a new pope can kick start a Vatican III-style process that genuinely seeks to move the church forward beyond its most recent crisis, then there is hope for the future.
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Scherer, the archbishop of Sao Paulo, is an especially intriguing possibility, as he is a Vatican insider and of German descent, which ties him to the traditional European papal picks, she said.
The cardinals stay in the Casa Santa Marta, a Vatican City hotel, for the duration of the conclave, moving from there to the Pauline Chapel to pray or the Sistine Chapel to vote.
He has so far declined to move into the grand papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace, preferring to stay for now at a Vatican guesthouse where he has been living and dining with other clergy.
Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said last week that the Holy See did not formally invite diplomatic missions to attend the Mass, instead simply informing countries through diplomatic channels that the event is taking place.
But if Gabriele, a Vatican citizen, were to be transferred to a jail in Italy, he might be tempted by lucrative offers to reveal other details about what he learned while in the Pope's service.
Pope John Paul saw the movie in December and told his longtime Polish secretary Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, "It is as it was, " meaning he considered it an authentic portrayal of Gospel accounts, a Vatican source told Reuters.
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