The big question now is whether the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Francis will take real action against sexual abuse by priests.
In an unprecedented move, on Friday, 27 June 2014 it was announced that former Vatican papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic 65-year old Josef Wesolowski had been defrocked, the highest penalty under canon law. Wesolowski is the highest-ranking Church official ever to be investigated for child abuse. He could be arrested.
Dominican Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito, whose office compiled evidence in the case, says the decision makes it possible for Wesolowski to face ordinary justice. But Dominguez Brito says that the case needs to be heard abroad because the DR is a signatory of the Vienna Convention that establishes that cases against persons with diplomatic status at the time of the crime should be heard in the state that the person represented, in this case the Vatican.
The defrocking means the archbishop can no longer perform priestly duties or present himself as a priest. He is accused of sexual abuse of minors, with evidence of specific cases compiled in Santo Domingo.
The Vatican announcement comes shortly after Monsignor Victor Masalles reported that he had seen Wesolowski walking around freely on the streets of Rome. It follows the visit of President Danilo Medina to Rome where he held a private meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican. Commenting on the Vatican decision last week, President Medina told the local press that Pope Francis had mentioned that he was expecting the former papal nuncio to receive the maximum Vatican penalty.
The defrocking technically makes it possible for Wesolowski to lose Vatican protection and he could stand trial in ordinary justice. While there was proof of the pedophilia charges, at the time Wesolowski was protected by the local Catholic Church and left the country using his diplomatic immunity. The pedophilia charges have also been reviewed by the Polish judiciary.
Wesolowski left the country surreptitiously on 21 August 2013 as investigative journalists were homing in on him as a follow up to pedophile charges against another Polish priest in the country, Wojciech Gil (known as Father Alberto), who has been accused of sexually abusing altar boys in his rural parish in Santiago. An investigative TV video showed both Wojciech and the nuncio cavorting with young boys in a Juan Dolio beach home.
As reported, the defrocking was proposed after a hearing before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which took place in the Vatican. Wesolowski has two months to appeal. The New York Times reported that Wesolowski still faces a criminal trial by the Vatican because, as a diplomat, he is a citizen of the Vatican city-state. As reported in the New York Times, it would be the first such trial held under new rules for criminal procedures implemented by the Vatican last year and a test of Pope Francis’ stated resolve to turn a page on the long-running Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals.
Read more:
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/931/0/former-nuncio-to-dominican-republic-to-be-laicised-and-he-faces-criminal-prosecution
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=21841
http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/174922,Polish-archbishop-defrocked-in-child-abuse-case
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/vatican-defrocked-ambassador-dominican-republic