BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

By Lisa Wangsness
| Globe Staff

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday appointed a Boston canon lawyer with extensive experience handling sexual abuse complaints to be the Vatican’s chief prosecutor of sex crimes against minors.

The Rev. Robert W. Oliver, 52, will become promoter of justice — a title akin to prosecutor in the American legal system — for the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, the Vatican office charged with protecting church doctrine. It oversees all serious crimes against the church, including the sexual abuse of children by priests.

Oliver is a longtime professor of theology and canon law who since 2002 has served in a variety of capacities in the church’s internal legal system, or canon law system, in Boston – as judge, promoter of justice, chief of investigations, and member of the archdiocesan review board that handles sexual abuse complaints. …

The…