A former papal ambassador accused of sexually abusing minors has
been hospitalized in an intensive care unit -- pushing back his trial once set
to start Saturday in Vatican City.
Jozef
Wesolowski, 66, was under house arrest in Vatican City when he fell sick Friday
night and was rushed to a public hospital.
A judge
subsequently held a short hearing and adjourned Wesolowski's trial to a yet
undetermined date, the Vatican Press Office said. It did not provide any
details on his condition.
Wesolowski, 66,
is the highest-ranking former Vatican official arrested for alleged sexual
abuse of minors. He is also the first tried on such charges at the Vatican.
In addition to
sexual abuse allegations, he is accused of possession of child pornography
during his time as papal nuncio -- or ambassador -- to the Dominican Republic.
The Vatican,
which operates as a city-state, has its own judicial system.
Link to
child abuse, pedophilia
The Vatican said it was investigating
Wesolowski two years ago, and it defrocked him last year.
An internal
church report linked him to child abuse and pedophilia, said Monsignor Agripino
Nunez Collado, a Catholic University rector.
At the time,
Dominican Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito said Wesolowski's case has
various ramifications.
"Here we
have to work with two legal aspects, first national laws and also international
laws in his status as a diplomat, which implies other mechanisms of
investigation and judgment," he said.
Test of pope's ruling
Pope Francis announced in 2013 that he
was extending the court's jurisdiction in sex abuse cases to include papal
diplomats, making Wesolowski's case the first test of the ruling.
He is not only
charged with offenses during his five years as nuncio of the Dominican
Republic, but also with child pornography charges committed in Rome between
August 2013, when he was recalled, and September 2014, when he was arrested.
Pornographic
images and videos
Last year, Italy's Corriere della Sera reported that Wesolowski's laptop contained more
than 100,000 files with pornographic images and videos, some showing naked
teens ages 13 to 17 forced to have sexual relations with each other or with
adults.
'Act decisively'
After his election to the papacy,
Francis told a senior Vatican official to "act decisively" against
sexual abuse and carry out "due proceedings against the guilty."
He also made it
a crime to abuse children sexually or physically on Vatican grounds. The acts
were already crimes under church law, but are now specifically outlawed within
the Vatican city-state, which is home to hundreds of people.
Before arriving
in the Dominican Republic seven years ago, Wesolowski was nuncio to Bolivia,
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
He began his
career as a priest in Poland in 1972, and became a bishop in 2000.
The trial was
postponed as Pope Francis visits Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
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