VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud
Vatican City, September 24 – Pope Francis said he wanted the Catholic Church to have “zero tolerance” with cases of child abuse after being elected to its helm last year. The arrest in the Vatican Tuesday of a former archbishop, Pole Jozef Wesolowski, on charges of allegedly abusing children while he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic has been interpreted as a sign that actions are backing up the pontiff’s words. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the arrest was conducted “in accordance with the Pope’s express will that such a grave and delicate case be addressed without delay, with the just and necessary rigor”. The arrest was the first inside the Vatican for alleged paedophilia. Wesolowski, who was recalled to Rome last year, was defrocked by a Vatican canon law tribunal in June after being found guilty of child abuse. This followed an investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Holy Inquisition, which handles sex-abuse cases. The 66-year-old was put under house arrest on Tuesday at a facility inside the Vatican, rather than taken to a cell, due to ill health, pending a criminal trial. He could face six or seven years in prison, Lombardi said Wednesday, adding that the former archbishop was also charged with possessing child pornography and that his trial will start late this year or early in 2015. The possible sentence would have been much longer, but Lombardi said that new stiffer Vatican laws on paedophilia that came into force in September 2013 could not be applied as the alleged crimes took place before.
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