Vatican’s ex-envoy guilty of sex abuse by church tribunal
Print Edition
THE Vatican’s former ambassador to the Dominican Republic has been convicted of sex abuse by a church tribunal and defrocked pending further criminal proceedings in the first case of its kind.
Polish archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who was recalled to Rome last year amid claims that he sexually abused a number of children in the slums of Santo Domingo, was found guilty by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican said yesterday.
Wesolowski, who has two months to appeal, was handed the severest punishment possible for a cleric and told he can’t perform priestly duties.
Once his canonical conviction is definitive he will have to face the Vatican City’s criminal tribunal, which could sentence him to prison in what would be the first such trial for sex abuse within the tiny city state.
The conviction came six months after the United Nations’ child rights watchdog highlighted Wesolowski’s case as an example of the Vatican’s failure to take concrete actions to prove its commitment to stamp out the abuse of minors by priests.
The sight of the Polish cleric wandering around Rome and lunching in restaurants had sparked fury on social media websites this week.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Wesolowski would now be stripped of his freedom of movement while the legal process took its course.
The Church has faced a decade-long series of scandals over abuse by priests and lay officials, from Ireland to the United States and Australia.
It was fiercely condemned by the UN in January for failing to stamp out child abuse and allowing systematic cover-ups by simply moving around clergy suspected of raping or molesting children.
Wesolowski, 65, had been ambassador to the Dominican Republic since 2008.
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