VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (UK)
By Nick Squires, Rome 27 Jun 2014
A Catholic archbishop and former Holy See ambassador has been defrocked after being convicted of sexually abusing teenage boys, making him the most senior Vatican figure to be punished for such a crime.
Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who was the Vatican’s nuncio or ambassador to the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, was found guilty of sex abuse by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the modern-day successor to the Inquisition.
The tribunal handed down the harshest penalty possible against a cleric under canon law, stripping him of his duties and status as a priest.
In a brief statement, the Vatican gave no information about what crimes Wesolowski had been convicted of, where and when the offences took place or how many boys were involved.
The punishment was immediately questioned by groups representing past victims of clerical paedophilia, who said the archbishop should face a criminal trial by civil authorities rather than a behind-closed-doors Vatican judicial process. …
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the world’s biggest group representing clerical sex abuse victims, said: “It’s encouraging when child-molesting clerics are disciplined, but we are troubled by the Vatican’s continued insistence on handling child sex crimes internally.
“Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski should face a criminal trial, not a church proceeding. And he should be in a secular jail. And he might have been in one for months, had Vatican officials cooperated with law enforcement.” The campaign group said Wesolowski should be extradited to the Dominican Republic or Poland, both of which are investigating the accusations against him, but said it suspected he would be protected by the Vatican.
“If this Vatican move leads to Wesolowski being locked up, we’ll be encouraged. However, we fear that it won’t.” The former archbishop is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be found guilty of sex abuse.
In a 75-page document released by the Vatican on Thursday, which will prepare the way for a conference in October on issues such as contraception and divorce, the Catholic Church hierarchy admitted that it had been gravely damaged by the scandal of paedophile priests.
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