A Caribbean bishop was shocked to see a former papal nuncio under investigation for alleged child abuse walking freely around Rome.
Bishop Victor Masalles, an auxiliary of the Santo Domingo archdiocese in the Dominican Republic said that he recently saw Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski “walking along the Via della Scrofa”.
Prosecutors in the Dominican Republic say they have convincing evidence that Wesolowki molested young men.
He has also been accused of abuse in his native Poland.
The former nuncio to the Dominican Republic was recalled to Rome last year.
The Vatican has promised to cooperate with Dominican and Polish prosecutors.
It has stated that as a citizen of the Vatican city-state, Archbishop Wesolowski is also subject to criminal prosecution there.
But Bishop Masalles said that the Vatican’s failure to clarify the status of the former nuncio is damaging.
“The silence of the Church has injured the People of God,” he said.
Speaking to a United Nations committee in May, Archbishop SilvanoTomasi confirmed previous Vatican statements about Wesolowski.
The former nuncio is the subject of a canonical investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as well as a criminal investigation by the Vatican police and court.
Weslowski is widely believed to be one of the three bishops that Pope Francis has said were being investigated in connection with abuse investigations.
On his flight back from the Holy Land in May, the Pope told reporters “three bishops are under investigation” for misdeeds related to the sexual abuse of minors and that “one has already been condemned and his penalty is being studied”.
One of the bishops thought to be among the three alluded to by the Pope has been cleared of abuse allegations.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith concluded that Bishop Cristian Contreras Molina of San Felipe in Chile was innocent of abuse accusations against him.
The local district attorney’s office in Chile has also closed its investigation.
Bishop Molina said the accusations were a slander.
Paraphrasing Pope Francis’ words, he added that “there is no place in the Church for priests who abuse minors”.
Sources
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