It is not clear why the 66-year-old was hospitalised
he trial of a former archbishop charged with child sex offences has been adjourned after the defendant fell ill hours before he was due to appear in court at the Vatican.
Jozef Wesolowski, 66, is accused of paying for sex with children in the Dominican Republic from 2008-2013.
He is being treated in intensive care for an unspecified illness.
Wesolowski is the first high-ranking Catholic to stand trial in the Vatican on sex abuse charges.
He has already been found guilty by a special church tribunal and defrocked.
His case is seen as a test of Pope Francis’ push to tackle sex offenders.
Wesolowski, who is originally from Poland, had been recalled from his role as the Vatican’s envoy to the Dominican Republic in 2013 after allegations surfaced accusing him of abusing boys there.
The trial opened but the accused was not there
He is also charged with possession of child pornography.
If convicted, he could face between six and 10 years in a Vatican jail.
Pope Francis has overhauled the Vatican’s justice system to allow bishops to be tried in the Papal state, after the church was accused of not doing enough to tackle sex crimes against children. Complete Article HERE!
Now-defrocked Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, papal nuncio for the Dominican Republic, led a Mass in Santo Domingo in 2013.
By John L. Allen Jr.
While Pope Francis is wowing vast crowds on a triumphant homecoming to Latin America this week, one of the pivotal moments of his papacy is set to begin back in Rome on Saturday with the opening of a criminal trial for former papal diplomat Józef Wesołowski on charges of sexual abuse of minors.
Ultimately, it’s the threat of criminal sanctions from Vatican tribunals that underlies new accountability measures Francis has created to face the two most chronic sources of scandal he inherited when he was elected in March 2013 – sexual abuse and financial misconduct.
The Wesołowski trial is the first major test of that criminal justice system under Francis. And it will have a great deal to say about whether this pontiff’s celebrated vow that there will be no “daddy’s boys” on his watch, meaning clerics able to remain above the law, actually has teeth.
Now 66, Wesołowski was born in Nowy Targ, Poland, in 1948, and ordained a priest by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła of Krakow, the future St. John Paul II, in 1972. Wesołowski served as a papal diplomat in a variety of nations in the late 1990s and 2000s, eventually being named the nuncio, or ambassador, to the Dominican Republic in 2008, holding the rank of archbishop for papal envoys.
He resigned as the nuncio to the Dominican Republic in 2013 amid allegations of child abuse, including charges that he was in the habit of picking up underage “shoeshine boys” in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, and paying them for sexual acts.
Wesołowski was recalled to Rome in August 2013 and faced an internal ecclesiastical probe, which led to his being laicized, or removed from the priesthood, in June 2014. In itself, laicization is a rare step for a bishop, and a clear signal the Vatican believes the charges against him have merit.
Since the scandal broke, the question has arisen of why Wesołowski hasn’t been sent packing back to the Dominican Republic to face criminal charges. While the Vatican has said it would comply with any extradition request, it also insists that because Wesołowski was holding a Vatican passport at the time of the alleged crimes he first has to face sanctions under the Vatican’s own criminal law.
In effect, Francis himself created the legal basis for the trial in July 2013 by issuing an edict known as a motu proprio specifying that criminal laws of the Vatican City State are also applicable to employees, such as ambassadors, stationed in other parts of the world.
Last month a Vatican spokesman announced the Wesołowski trial would open on July 11, and predicted it would wrap up early in 2016. In addition to his conduct in the Dominican Republic, Wesołowski faces charges related to pornographic images reportedly discovered on a personal computer while living in Rome after his recall.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the trial would draw upon both information transmitted by investigators in the Dominican Republic and IT analysis by Vatican experts. The Vatican’s criminal tribunal is headed by a lay jurist named Giuseppe Dalla Torre, a longtime professor of law at the University of Bologna.
The Vatican does not have jury trials. Hearings are conducted before a judge, and if the initial procedure results in a conviction the accused party can appeal to a three-judge tribunal and ultimately to a Corte di Cassazione, or Supreme Court. Accused parties have the right to a public defender.
If he’s convicted, Wesołowski could face a sentence of six or seven years in prison on each count as well as a steep fine. That term could be served in a Vatican facility, though in the past when a Vatican court has imposed a lengthy sentence it’s generally been served in an Italian prison.
Aside from the details of Wesołowski’s personal situation, his case is key because no matter what happens it will set a precedent.
The last time a Vatican criminal court held a high-profile trial it was October 2012. And it lasted only four days. Former papal butler Paolo Gabriele admitted to stealing Vatican documents and leaking them to an Italian journalist, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was given a full pardon by Pope Benedict XVI two months later.
This time around, presumably, if Wesołowski is convicted a pardon seems highly unlikely.
With Gabriele, Benedict himself was the injured party and fully within his rights to decide to let the perpetrator off the hook. With Wesołowski, the real injured parties are the minors he allegedly abused, and Francis probably would not take it upon himself to waive the legal consequences of Wesołowski’s actions.
Ultimately, it’s precisely those consequences that form the bedrock of the pope’s new accountability systems. Both with sexual abuse and also various financial crimes, such as money-laundering and embezzlement, the new systems envision preliminary investigations by Vatican agencies, whose ultimate power is to refer the matter to the Vatican’s criminal prosecutor for possible charges.
Insiders and outsiders alike thus will be watching to see how Wesołowski’s trial plays out.
If the impression is of foot-dragging and cover-up, the take-away will be that promises of accountability ring hollow. If the trial unfolds in a transparent manner and, assuming guilt is established, a sentence commensurate with the crimes is imposed, then reasonable observers will conclude that the era of “daddy’s boys” in the Church really is over.
Francis, of course, knows what’s at stake. That’s why throughout this busy week on the road, he’ll no doubt keep one eye on what’s happening back in Rome. Complete Article HERE!
While Nienstedt authorized the investigation in the hope of clearing his name, the results threatened to ruin it. Several of his top advisers gathered privately in April 2014, and read sworn statements gathered by the lawyers that accused Nienstedt of inappropriate behavior, including sexual advances toward priests. Each adviser agreed he should resign.
A few days later, Auxiliary Bishops Lee Piche and Andrew Cozzens traveled to Washington to tell the papal ambassador; MPR was unable to learn what transpired there. But soon after the bishops returned home, the investigation as originally conceived ended, with Piche limiting the probe to allegations of crimes and grave sins. A new law firm eventually took over.
The Vatican announced Nienstedt’s and Piche’s resignationsMonday. They stepped down amid an intensifying scandal over how the archdiocese handled cases of clerical sexual misconduct. The archdiocese sought bankruptcy protection in January as abuse claims rose, and prosecutors filed criminal child-endangerment charges against the archdiocese earlier this month for allegedly turning a blind eye to Curtis Wehmeyer, a now-imprisoned former priest convicted of molesting two boys.
MPR said its details of how Nienstedt tried to limit the investigation came from interviews with more than a dozen people with direct knowledge of the inquiry, including four people who provided affidavits to investigators, current and former archdiocese officials, and others who spoke with the investigators.
MPR could not reach Nienstedt for comment on the new allegations. In a 2014 interview, Nienstedt said, “I’ve done nothing criminally wrong ever, and nothing immoral” and that he hadn’t interfered with the investigation.
But attorneys at the Greene Espel law firm — the initial firm on the Nienstedt investigation — disputed the archbishop’s claim of noninterference as well as a recent similar statement from Piche.
“We strongly disagree with those statements. Greene Espel’s investigation and work will not be mischaracterized without a response by us,” attorneys Matt Forsgren and David Wallace-Jackson told MPR.
The attorneys had wanted to know whether Nienstedt had a personal relationship with Wehmeyer, and whether that influenced his decision to keep Wehmeyer in ministry despite knowing about his past misconduct. Nienstedt told MPR in 2014 he did not have a sexually inappropriate relationship with Wehmeyer.
Wehmeyer told the investigators he couldn’t understand why Nienstedt wanted to spend time with him or why he kept him in ministry. He said Nienstedt made him uncomfortable and that he wasn’t interested in Nienstedt.
Ex-seminarian James Heathcott, who lives in Oregon, told MPR he enrolled at a Detroit seminary in 1987 when he was 18. Nienstedt became rector a year later, and the seminary’s tone immediately changed, he said.
According to the affidavit, Nienstedt asked Heathcott: “Have you explored your sexuality?” and “Do you think you have homosexual tendencies?”
Heathcott also said Nienstedt later invited him on a ski trip at a “private chalet.” Heathcott said he declined and told Nienstedt that the invitation appeared to contradict his own statements to seminarians about the importance of boundaries. He said Nienstedt told him a few days later to pack his belongings and leave.
“I consider Nienstedt’s interactions with me to be a kind of grooming … I believe he denied me the chance to continue exploring my calling to the priesthood to its fruition,” he said in the affidavit.
The archdiocese, which filed for bankruptcy in January, hasn’t said what it paid Greene Espel. MPR, citing people with direct knowledge, put the cost at several hundred thousand dollars. The firm wouldn’t comment either. The archdiocese paid the second firm, Wold Morrison, nearly $139,000 between October and January, but the filing didn’t say if it made any payments to either firm earlier.
Cardinal Desmond Connell, the former archbishop of Dublin, told the Murphy commission in Ireland that mental reservation was deceiving someone without telling a lie. He said it is permissible to use “an ambiguous expression realising that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be.”There is an exquisite piece of mental reservation in a recent announcement from the Vatican. According to Vatican Radio, “The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors presented a five point plan to the Pope and his closest advisors at this week’s meeting, including the establishment of a ‘new judicial section’ to examine all cases of bishops accused of abusing their office and failing to report crimes committed by priests in their care.”The ambiguous expression in this case is “failing to report crimes” because it does not say to whom the bishops should have reported. Nearly everyone would understand the expression to mean reporting to the police. That is not what the Vatican means. It means reporting to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in every case and only sometimes to the police.
As the Holy See told the Irish foreign minister in 2011, bishops are the governors of their own diocese, and so far as the church is concerned, the only restraint on them is canon law. Bishops can only be put on trial before this new tribunal for breaching canon law. A bishop who fails to report credible allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is in breach of canon law because that obligation is set out in the decree Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela.
Likewise, canon law in the United States since 2002, and for the rest of the world since 2010, requires bishops to comply with domestic civil reporting laws. A failure to do so constitutes a breach of canon law. The recently resigned bishops — Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché of St. Paul-Minneapolis and Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., who was convicted by a Missouri court of failing to report a priest’s possession of child pornography — could be brought before the new tribunal for failing to comply with civil laws on reporting as required by the norms approved in December 2002 by the Holy See for the United States.
Very few jurisdictions in the world have comprehensive reporting laws. Most have reporting laws for children at risk, that is, where they are under the age of 18, but very few have reporting laws that apply to historical abuse, that is, where the abused person is now an adult. In the United States, half the states have such laws and half do not. The United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Canada do not have them. In 2014 and 2015, the Italian and Polish Catholic bishops’ conferences announced that they would not be reporting child sex abuse offenses by clergy to the police because their civil laws did not require it. Their stance is consistent with canon law.
In Australia, only two out of the eight states and territories require the reporting of historical abuse. Figures produced at the Victorian parliamentary inquiry in Australia suggest that historical abuse amounts to more than 99 percent of all complaints. The same inquiry found that of the 611 complaints of child sexual abuse in the four Victorian dioceses between 1996 and 2012, not one of them had been reported by the church to the civil authorities.
This was understandable because prior to 2014, there was no requirement under Victorian law to report any abuse, whether of children at risk or historical abuse. And the bishops on ordination had sworn an oath to obey all ecclesiastical laws, which in this case meant not reporting these crimes to the police in accordance with the pontifical secret imposed by Pope Paul VI’s Secreta Continere and Pope John Paul II’s Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela.
In those jurisdictions without such reporting laws, unless a bishop walks into a priest’s bedroom and finds him in flagrante delicto with a minor, the pontifical secret prevents him from reporting any knowledge of or allegations about such crimes to the police. If he reports the matter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he has complied with canon law and cannot be charged with “abuse of office,” despite the fact that he has covered up these crimes by not reporting them to the police.
Many media reports describe the setting up of this tribunal as a breakthrough. There is no breakthrough. The announcement does not do away with the pontifical secret and does not extend reporting requirements to the civil authorities. In many cases of cover-up by bishops, there will be no abuse of office because the cover-up has been required by canon law, as the announcements by the Italian and Polish bishops attest.
The pope has always had jurisdiction to dismiss or punish bishops like Nienstedt, Piché and Finn, who have breached canon law. He even has jurisdiction to dismiss them even where they have not breached canon law, as the case of the Australian Bishop William Morris shows.
This announcement is being dressed up as a measure to protect children when all it is doing is setting up a tribunal that would ensure that bishops accused of breaching canon law have the right to be heard. It is another example of clericalism creating smoke and mirrors to give the impression that better protections are being provided for children when the people being looked after are the bishops. The real breakthrough will happen when the Holy See complies with the demands of the United Nations. Complete Article HERE!
A Vatican prosecutor on Monday ordered the trial of a former Roman Catholic archbishop accused of paying for sex with children while he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic and of possessing child pornographic material.
Jozef Wesolowski, a Pole who had been defrocked by a Vatican tribunal, last year became the first person to be arrested inside the Vatican on paedophilia charges.
A statement said the trial, the first on paedophilia charges to be held inside the Vatican City, would start on July 11.
It said allegations of crimes committed in the Dominican Republic were based on an investigation by police there.
The others were based on a Vatican investigation that found child pornography on his computer after he was arrested last September.
Wesolowski was recalled to Rome by the Vatican in 2013 when he was still a diplomat in Santo Domingo and he was relieved of his duties after Dominican media accused him of paying boys to perform sexual acts.
The former archbishop, who later lost his diplomatic immunity, could face up to 12 years in jail, the Vatican said at the time of his arrest. Complete Article HERE!
