After decades of allegations of child abuse, the Holy See’s prosecutor says the Vatican will now be taking on the issue of pedophilia. Last weekend, Gian Piero Milano, the Holy See’s Promoter of Justice, released a justice report containing information from 2014 stating that two Vatican officials are facing charges of child abuse. At least one of the officials, who remains unnamed, is charged with possession of inappropriate and illegal sexual images of children. The other has been charged with child sex abuse.
While Milano declined to name either of the officials facing pedophilia charges, Holy See spokesman Federico Lombardi revealed that one of the men is disgraced former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Josef Wesolowski. Wesolowski was arrested last year after it was discovered that he sexually abused several young boys while on an envoy to the Dominican Republic.
After the discovery, the Vatican stripped Wesolowski of his diplomatic immunity and he is currently awaiting trial in Vatican city. Wesolowski’s trial will be the first ever sex abuse trial held at the Holy See.
In addition to the crimes against children, the Vatican revealed that it also investigated cases of drug trafficking, money laundering, and fraud. In one case, a packet of cocaine-filled condoms were discovered at Germany’s Leipzig airport and handed to the Vatican in the hope of catching the buyer, but no one ever came to collect the package.
Interestingly, despite all of the criminal activity reported in the Vatican last year, only six people wound up in jail. One was Marcello di Finizio, an Italian protester who climbed on top of St. Peter’s Basilica, and Iana Azhdanova, a feminist activist who flashed her breasts and grabbed a baby Jesus statue from the Vatican’s nativity scene. Child molester Josef Wesolowski, however, has been held in what is being called “modified house arrest” within Vatican City, and thus far has not spent any time in jail.
