VATICAN CITY
The Local
A former Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic has been placed under house arrest in the city state for what may be the first stage of criminal proceedings by the Holy See in a case of sexual abuse of children, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Pope Francis had personally ordered swift action in the case of Polish former archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who was convicted of sex abuse by a Church tribunal in June and defrocked pending further criminal proceedings.
The 65-year-old had been living in a convent in Rome until the arrest, according to reports in the Italian media on Wednesday.
Lombardi said the legal move was “the result of the pope’s express wish for a case this serious and sensitive to be dealt with without delay, with the necessary scrupulousness and full undertaking of responsibility on the part of the institutions which head up the Holy See.”
If the case goes to trial, it will be the first for sex abuse within the tiny city state.
Wesolowski’s defrocking came six months after the UN children’s 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.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.