VATICAN CITY
Newsweek
Jozef Wesolowski, the disgraced former archbishop and Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic, has died before he could stand trial for child sex offences.
British magazine The Catholic Herald reported on Friday that Wesolowski, 67, who had been defrocked by the Vatican and placed under house arrest due to ill health, died inside the Vatican at 5 a.m. on Friday. The Polish former priest would have been the highest-ranking Vatican official ever to face criminal charges for sexual abuse of children.
A press statement from the Vatican said that initial checks by Vatican officials “indicated that the death was from natural causes,” according to AP. The statement said that the Vatican prosecutor had ordered an immediate autopsy and that Pope Francis had been informed.
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