{"id":2916,"date":"2018-04-11T01:43:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T08:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=2916"},"modified":"2018-04-11T03:52:59","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T10:52:59","slug":"papal-diplomat-held-over-child-abuse-images-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=2916","title":{"rendered":"“Trial of Child-Pornography Suspect Would Be a First for the Vatican”, The Wall Street Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Francis X. Rocca,\u00a0Vatican correspondent, April 9, 2018<\/span><\/p>\n

The Vatican has arrested one of its former diplomats on suspicion of violating child-pornography laws.<\/p>\n

ROME\u2014The Vatican\u2019s arrest of one of its diplomats on suspicion of violating child-pornography laws<\/a> has set the stage for the first trial for that crime in Vatican City\u2014an event likely to be closely watched as a sign of Pope Francis \u2019 commitment to combating clerical sex abuse.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cLet us hope there is a trial soon and it is transparent,\u201d Marie Collins, a former member of the pope\u2019s advisory panel on child protection, tweeted Sunday. \u201cThe possession of child-abuse images is a serious crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vatican said in a statement Saturday that its police force, known as the gendarmerie, had arrested Italian Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella that morning under a Vatican law setting penalties for anyone who \u201cdistributes, disseminates, transmits, imports, exports, offers or sells child pornography.\u201d<\/p>\n

Msgr. Capella was being held in a cell in the gendarmerie\u2019s barracks, the statement said. He had been under house arrest in the Vatican, according to a person familiar with the matter. Attempts to reach him on Sunday were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

His arrest came more than six months after the Vatican recalled the then-unidentified diplomat from its embassy in Washington<\/a>, after the U.S. State Department notified it about his \u201cpossible violation of laws relating to child-pornography images.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vatican said in September that its prosecutor was investigating and pursuing \u201cinternational collaboration\u201d to obtain evidence in the case.<\/p>\n

The decision to recall Msgr. Capella, rather than waive his diplomatic immunity and allow him to be tried in the U.S., raised concerns among U.S. bishops that it could undermine a decade and a half of efforts to regain public trust on responses to clerical sex abuse.<\/p>\n

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged the Holy See to be \u201cforthcoming with more details\u201d and called for an \u201cimmediate, thorough, and transparent investigation\u2026in cooperation with law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later that month, police in Windsor, Ontario, said they had issued a nationwide warrant<\/a> for Msgr. Capella for allegedly uploading child pornography to a social network in Canada in 2016.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s announcement was the first Vatican statement on the subject since September<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Vatican declined to comment on the timing of a possible indictment or trial for Msgr. Capella.<\/p>\n

The 2013 law under which he was arrested provides for \u201cone to five years imprisonment and a fine from \u20ac2,500 to \u20ac50,000 ($3,000 to $61,000])\u201d However, the Vatican statement specifically cited a section of the law stipulating that the \u201cpenalty is increased if a considerable quantity of pornographic material is involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Msgr. Capella\u2019s trial would be the first criminal trial for child pornography in Vatican City.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Jozef Wesolowski, a former archbishop and the Holy See\u2019s former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, died of a heart attack while awaiting his Vatican trial for sexual abuse of minors and possession of child pornography. The Vatican had recalled him from the Dominican Republic two years earlier but hadn\u2019t placed him under house arrest until September 2014, after he had been defrocked by a church tribunal.<\/p>\n

The arrest of Msgr. Capella comes amid heavy criticism of Pope Francis\u2019 record on sex abuse, following the pope\u2019s comments in January dismissing as slander accusations that a Chilean bishop had failed to report assaults by another priest.<\/p>\n

The pope\u2019s words drew an extraordinary rebuke from his top adviser on sex abuse, Boston\u2019s Cardinal Sean O\u2019Malley, who said they had caused \u201cgreat pain\u201d to sex abuse victims by suggesting they wouldn\u2019t be believed without proof.<\/p>\n

The pope then appointed the Vatican\u2019s former prosecutor for sex abuse to interview witnesses<\/a> and examine possible new evidence in the case. No results of that investigation have been announced.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Francis X. Rocca,\u00a0Vatican correspondent, April 9, 2018 The Vatican has arrested one of its former diplomats on suspicion of violating child-pornography laws. ROME\u2014The Vatican\u2019s arrest of one of its diplomats on suspicion of violating child-pornography laws has set the stage for the first trial for that crime in Vatican City\u2014an event likely to be closely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2916"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2925,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions\/2925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}