ROME
International Business Times
November 10, 2017
By Isabelle Gerretsen
Pope Francis is facing mounting pressure to crack down on clerical sex abuse.
A new book contains bombshell allegations that priests sexually abused teenage boys at a youth seminary in the Vatican, claiming reports of abuse were stifled.
Original Sin, Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi’s latest book, includes the shocking claim that a man, who recently became a priest, sexually assaulted a 17-year-old boy in 2012.
The abuse reportedly took place at the Vatican’s St. Pius X pre-seminary for middle- and high-schoolers, where many Catholic students are trained to become priests.
Kamil Tadeusz Jazembowski, the victim’s roommate, told Nuzzi that the adult seminarian repeatedly visited their bedroom, where he had oral sex with the boy.
Jazembowski said his roommate “felt obliged to go along with it”, describing the abuser as a man who exercised “a form of power and intimidation” over the students and imposed “bullying or sexual acts” on them.
When he raised his concerns with Vatican authorities, Jazembowski says he was told to leave the residence. The book reproduces a letter written by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the ex-seminarian in 2014, which states that no sexual abuse of a minor had taken place and that the matter would be handed over to the Vatican’s office for clergy.
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