Italian Magazine Claims NSA Intercepted Vatican Communications; NSA Denies Targeting Vatican

As reported by the Huffington Post and Reuters, the Italian magazine Panorama claimed in an article (full text in Italian) on Wednesday that the U.S. National Security Agency's communications intercepts included internal communications at the Vatican and phone calls at the Domus Sanctae Marthae where cardinals lived during the Papal conclave that selected Pope Francis. It says that calls may have been intercepted up to the start of the Conclave.  The magazine also charges that calls about this year's election of the new president of the Vatican Bank were monitored. A Vatican spokesman said: "We don’t know anything about this, and in any case we don’t have any concerns about it." The NSA said that it "does not target the Vatican" and Panorama's claims that it did "are not true."