Vatican arrests former archbishop and diplomat Jozef Wesolowski on charges of paedophilia

VATICAN CITY
ABC News (Australia)

The Vatican has arrested a former archbishop accused of paying for sex with children while he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic, the first-ever arrest inside the city state on charges of paedophilia.

Jozef Wesolowski, a Pole who was defrocked by a Vatican tribunal in June, was placed under house awaiting a criminal trial, the Vatican said in a statement.

Wesolowski was granted house arrest in a Vatican apartment for medical reasons, rather than detained in the Vatican prison, a couple of rooms attached to a courthouse.

The 66-year-old was the most prominent church figure to be arrested since Paolo Gabriele, a former papal butler convicted in 2012 of stealing and leaking private papers of former Pope Benedict XVI.

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