PARIS (FRANCE)
Wall Street Journal

December 16, 2020

By Francis X. Rocca and Noemie Bisserbe

Archbishop Luigi Ventura is one of several prominent Catholic churchmen accused of sexual misconduct in recent years

A former Vatican envoy to France was found guilty of sexually assaulting five men, in the latest case of such misconduct by a senior Catholic Church official.

Archbishop Luigi Ventura, who served as papal nuncio to France until December 2019, received a suspended eight-month prison sentence from a court in Paris Wednesday for the assaults, which occurred between 2018 and 2019.

One of the victims, an employee of the city of Paris who was tasked with welcoming the cleric at the mayor’s New Year address in 2019, said the archbishop had groped him in an “insistent and repeated” manner.

The 76-year-old archbishop was convicted in absentia. The court had accepted a note from his doctor saying that…