VATICAN CITY
Crux
By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent June 15, 2015
ROME — A Vatican prosecutor has ordered a defrocked Polish archbishop to stand trial for allegedly paying for sex with children while serving as a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic.
A Vatican spokesman said Wednesday that ex-Archbishop Józef Wesolowski has been charged with two counts — sexual abuse of minors and possession of child pornography — and will stand trial July 11.
It will be the first criminal trial of a sexual abuse case conducted by the Vatican. The Vatican’s criminal courts have jurisdiction over Wesolowski because he is a papal diplomat and citizen of the Vatican City State.
The case has been highly sensitive, given that Wesolowski was an ambassador of the Holy See — a direct representative of the pope and not just one of the world’s 440,000 priests — and had been ordained both a priest and a bishop by St. John Paul II.
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