VATICAN CITY
Crux
By Associated Press
September 23, 2014
The Vatican put its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic under house arrest Tuesday after opening a criminal trial against him, the first time a high-ranking Vatican official has ever faced criminal charges for sexually abusing youngsters.
Josef Wesolowski had already been defrocked in June after the Vatican’s canon law court found him guilty of abuse and imposed its toughest penalty under church law: laicization, or returning to life as a layman.
On Tuesday, the Vatican City State’s separate criminal court opened a preliminary hearing into his case and ordered him placed under house arrest.
A Vatican statement said Wesolwski presented medical documentation detailing health concerns that presumably prevented a more restrictive type of detention. The Vatican has a few small detention rooms inside its police barracks, but no long-term facilities. …
Read the Statement of the Director of the Holy See Press Office regarding the penal proceedings involving former nuncio Josef Wesolwoski:
Today, the Promoter of Justice of the Court of First Instance of the Vatican City State summoned the former nuncio J. Wesolowski, on whom he had conducted a criminal investigation. The prelate – already judged in the first instance by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and reduced to the lay state at the end of canonical administrative penal process – was notified of the indictment of the criminal proceedings against him for serious acts of abuse of minors in the Dominican Republic.
The seriousness of the allegations has prompted the official investigation to impose a restrictive measure that, in light of the accused’s health condition, as evidenced by medical documentation, consists of house arrest, with its related limitations, in a location within the Vatican City State.
The initiative taken by the judicial departments of Vatican City State is a result of the express desire of the Pope, so that a case so serious and delicate would be addressed without delay, with just and necessary rigor, and with full assumption of responsibility on the part of the institutions that are governed by the Holy See.
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