TRIAL OF DISGRACED BISHOP CLOSE TO POPE REIGNITES CONTROVERSY OVER VATICAN COVERUPS
VATICAN CITY— An Argentine bishop close to Pope Francis is now on trial at the Vatican for sexually abusing seminarians, Pope Francis said on Tuesday.
Francis told Mexico’s Televisa that he received the results of a preliminary investigation into Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta two weeks ago and ordered the trial by a Vatican tribunal.
Holy parachute
Zanchetta resigned as bishop of Oran, Argentina in 2017 and within a few months, Francis named him to a senior Vatican administration position.
The pope said Zanchetta was appointed to the Vatican office because the bishop showed aptitude for administration and that he required treatment in Spain, making his continued stay in Argentina unrealistic.
Prior knowledge
But the Associated Press and Argentina’s Tribune of Salta reported that the Vatican was aware of Zanchetta’s behavior two years before he resigned.
The Vatican, however, insisted that Zanchetta was only facing governance problems in 2017, although documents showed other Argentine church officials had complained about Zanchetta’s behavior in 2016.
The complaint charged Zanchetta of asking seminarians for massages, going into their rooms to wake them up in the morning, and sitting on their beds and inviting them to drink alcohol.
The accusations are being used by the pope’s critics in the secretive Curia to attack him, since they show Francis disregarded damaging information about his allies.
On Tuesday, a former aide of defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick released email correspondence suggesting that the cardinal was placed under Vatican restrictions in 2008 for sleeping with seminarians, but regularly flouted those travel rules with the apparent knowledge of Vatican officials under Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.
Email excerpts emerge
The email excerpts showed that retired Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl knew about the restrictions despite claims of ignorance after the McCarrick scandal exploded last year.
Francis defrocked McCarrick in February after a church investigation confirmed that McCarrick sexually abused minors and adults.
Just like politicians
The Vatican restrictions have become controversial after the pope’s critics accused Francis of rehabilitating McCarrick despite knowing of his behavior.
The emails did not indicate whether the pope actually lifted the restrictions, but they did show that McCarrick regularly ignored them even during the papacy of Benedict.—