VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service
By Francis X. Rocca
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican denied covering up for a former papal ambassador accused of sexually abusing boys and suggested he might have to stand trial on the charges in the Dominican Republic.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, released a statement Aug. 25 in response to journalists’ questions about former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, a Pole who served as nuncio to the Dominican Republic until August 2013.
According to an Aug. 23 article in the New York Times, the Vatican “secretly recalled (Wesolowski) to Rome last year before he could be investigated, and then invoked diplomatic immunity for Mr. Wesolowski so that he could not face trial in the Dominican Republic.”
Father Lombardi responded that the Vatican, by recalling the diplomat from his post last summer, “moved without delay and correctly in light of the fact that former nuncio Wesolowski held the position of a diplomatic representative of the Holy See.”
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