A convicted priest is back at work. Child advocates want Pope Leo to act.
Carlo Alberto Capella served prison time for a child pornography conviction but was allowed to return to work at the Vatican, posing a test for Pope Leo XIV.
Capella, a 58-year-old Italian priest, was investigated by U.S. and Canadian authorities for almost two years for gathering and sharing child pornography while a senior diplomat at the Holy See’s embassy in Washington. In 2017, the U.S. State Department asked the Vatican to waive his diplomatic immunity, a request it denied. Instead, Capella was recalled to Rome, where he admitted to tracking down “repugnant” images and, in a rare Vatican criminal trial a year later, was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.
In recent weeks, reports have emerged on Catholic blogs of his 2022 release and quiet return to work at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State. His restoration to the powerful department has outraged advocates for the survivors of abuse by Catholic clerics. They insist that even though he was never accused of sexual abuse, a convicted priest who consumed child pornography has no place in a prominent Vatican office.
As Pope Leo is confronted with demands to act, he becomes the fourth pontiff since the 1990s to face scrutiny, and potentially judgment, over how he handles the still-emerging cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics.
Pope John Paul II faced both contemporary and posthumous criticism for his handling of abuse cases. The issue dogged Benedict XVI even more, with a chorus of complaints seen as one of several factors contributing to his historic decision to retire. Pope Francis enacted reforms aimed at addressing the scandals, yet survivor groups routinely took him to task for failing to adopt a policy of zero tolerance including mandatory reporting to civil authorities.
Now, advocacy groups are looking to Leo to chart a different course, and even reverse Francis on the Capella case.
Capella’s attorney, Roberto Borgogno, said in an interview that his client was released a year early, in the first part of 2022, for “good behavior” and resumed work at the secretariat in January 2023. Pope Francis, Borgogno said, approved Capella’s return and had at least one direct post-release conversation with him about his contrition.
The renewed focus on Capella comes as Archbishop Guy de Kerimel of Toulouse, France, faces criticism for appointing a priest, convicted of raping a 16-year-old boy in 1993, to the senior post of archdiocesan chancellor, citing the moral imperative of forgiveness. Victims groups are now calling on Leo to intervene in both instances.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/202...d-vatican/
Carlo Alberto Capella served prison time for a child pornography conviction but was allowed to return to work at the Vatican, posing a test for Pope Leo XIV.
Capella, a 58-year-old Italian priest, was investigated by U.S. and Canadian authorities for almost two years for gathering and sharing child pornography while a senior diplomat at the Holy See’s embassy in Washington. In 2017, the U.S. State Department asked the Vatican to waive his diplomatic immunity, a request it denied. Instead, Capella was recalled to Rome, where he admitted to tracking down “repugnant” images and, in a rare Vatican criminal trial a year later, was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.
In recent weeks, reports have emerged on Catholic blogs of his 2022 release and quiet return to work at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State. His restoration to the powerful department has outraged advocates for the survivors of abuse by Catholic clerics. They insist that even though he was never accused of sexual abuse, a convicted priest who consumed child pornography has no place in a prominent Vatican office.
As Pope Leo is confronted with demands to act, he becomes the fourth pontiff since the 1990s to face scrutiny, and potentially judgment, over how he handles the still-emerging cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics.
Pope John Paul II faced both contemporary and posthumous criticism for his handling of abuse cases. The issue dogged Benedict XVI even more, with a chorus of complaints seen as one of several factors contributing to his historic decision to retire. Pope Francis enacted reforms aimed at addressing the scandals, yet survivor groups routinely took him to task for failing to adopt a policy of zero tolerance including mandatory reporting to civil authorities.
Now, advocacy groups are looking to Leo to chart a different course, and even reverse Francis on the Capella case.
Capella’s attorney, Roberto Borgogno, said in an interview that his client was released a year early, in the first part of 2022, for “good behavior” and resumed work at the secretariat in January 2023. Pope Francis, Borgogno said, approved Capella’s return and had at least one direct post-release conversation with him about his contrition.
The renewed focus on Capella comes as Archbishop Guy de Kerimel of Toulouse, France, faces criticism for appointing a priest, convicted of raping a 16-year-old boy in 1993, to the senior post of archdiocesan chancellor, citing the moral imperative of forgiveness. Victims groups are now calling on Leo to intervene in both instances.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/202...d-vatican/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
