French Court docket Convicts Former Vatican Envoy of Sexual Assault

Just one of the victims, an staff of the metropolis of Paris who was tasked with welcoming the cleric at the mayor’s New Year deal with in 2019, mentioned the archbishop experienced groped him in an “insistent and repeated” way.

The 76-12 months-old archbishop was convicted in absentia. The court had acknowledged a take note from his health care provider expressing that he shouldn’t vacation from Rome to Paris all through the recent period of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Holy See Press Place of work did not promptly reply to a request for comment. An endeavor to achieve the archbishop as a result of the Vatican was not profitable.

In July 2019, the Vatican took the unconventional phase of withdrawing the archbishop’s diplomatic immunity to prosecution, in accordance with what it reported had been his wishes, to “collaborate absolutely and spontaneously with the French judicial authorities.” This summer time, the Vatican spokesman stated Archbishop Ventura reaffirmed his innocence.

Archbishop Ventura, a longtime Vatican diplomat, is one particular of many senior users of the Catholic hierarchy accused of sexual misconduct with grownups in latest yrs, incorporating an additional dimension to the church’s prolonged-functioning disaster in excess of the clerical abuse of little ones.

In June, the pope reinstated his longtime protégé Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta in a large-amount Vatican task, even even though he is dealing with costs of sexual harassment in his indigenous Argentina. Bishop Zanchetta has denied wrongdoing.

Last month, a Vatican report showed that

Pope Francis

and his two speedy predecessors experienced failed for many years to self-control U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for sexual misconduct.

St. John Paul II

appointed Mr. McCarrick as archbishop of Washington, D.C., in 2000, even soon after becoming warned that he experienced been accused of sharing his mattress with grownup seminarians and of pedophilia.

Beneath Pope

Benedict XVI,

the Vatican pressed Mr. McCarrick to resign as archbishop of Washington and asked him to preserve a minimal profile, but didn’t subject matter him to a church trial. Pope Francis adopted the guide of his predecessors and assumed that the allegations had been rejected, the report reported. In 2019, Mr. McCarrick became the first cardinal in contemporary moments to be dismissed from the priesthood just after a church trial located him responsible of sexual abuse of minors and sexual misconduct with grown ups. Mr. McCarrick denied wrongdoing.

Generate to Francis X. Rocca at [email protected] and Noemie Bisserbe at [email protected]