VATICAN CITY
Washington Post
Defrocked diplomat may become first priest accused of sexual abuse to be tried at the Vatican
By Michelle Boorstein August 25
The world may be about to witness a first: the Vatican putting on trial one of its own officials for sexual abuse. On Monday a Vatican spokesman said church authorities are in the midst of figuring out what the procedure would even look like.
“This is history in the making and we must wait to see how this will develop,” said the Rev. Thomas Rosica, an English-language spokesman for the Vatican.
The case of Josef which as a city-state has its own judicial systemi exploded earlier this summer when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the Vatican’s doctrine-enforcing arm — found the former ambassador to the Dominican Republic had sexually abused boys there and laicized, or defrocked, him. That was the first time someone officially representing the pope had been punished for sexual abuse. The Polish priest is appealing that decision.
On the criminal front, media reported that Dominican authorities never charged Wesolowski because he had diplomatic immunity. But that question reemerged this past weekend when the New York Times quoted legal experts in the Dominican Republic questioning why Wesolowski would not be forced to face his accusers locally. Wesolowski was recalled to Rome in the summer of 2013 before local officials could investigate there. Some advocates for clergy sex abuse survivors said the case is a test for Pope Francis’s claim of zero-tolerance and that Wesolowski should be imprisoned.
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