The Vatican’s Defrocked Diplomat, The New York Times (September 1, 2014)

Roman Catholics and much of the world have been closely watching for evidence that Pope Francis has the wherewithal to buck the resistance to reform from the Vatican’s powerful bureaucracy.

An encouraging sign emerged last week with the announcement that the Vatican’s former ambassador to the Dominican Republic had been stripped of diplomatic immunity and could be tried there for his alleged soliciting of underage boys for sexual acts. The announcement reversed a devious and secret stratagem engineered by unidentified Vatican officials last year to recall the ambassador, Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, before Dominican authorities could bring criminal charges of child abuse against him.

The Vatican’s use of immunity to shield the prelate from criminal prosecution outside the Vatican set off a furor, particularly in light of Pope Francis’s promise that in the pedophilia scandal “there are no privileges” for priests or prelates. That diplomatic immunity was suddenly reversed after an article in The Times by Laurie Goodstein detailing numerous cases of the archbishop’s alleged preying on impoverished Dominican shoeshine boys and others who said they were paid for sex. There are suggestions Pope Francis might have had a hand in the reversal; he previously stressed to a colleague that the Wesolowski case felt like “a dagger” in his heart.

The Vatican denied it had attempted a cover-up in recalling the archbishop, pointing out that he was later defrocked after church officials concluded he was indeed guilty of abusing children. Defrocking is hardly adequate punishment for criminal acts, however, and the Vatican maintains the former archbishop might still face criminal charges under its own laws. There are understandable concerns that this could be used to shield him from full justice in the places where he allegedly abused children. However it ends, the case will be followed as an indicator of Pope Francis’s commitment to true church reform.