French Court Convicts Former Vatican Envoy of Sexual Assault
Archbishop Luigi Ventura is one of several prominent Catholic churchmen accused of sexual misconduct in recent years
By and Dec. 16, 2020 12:58 pm ET
PARIS—A former Vatican envoy to France was found guilty of sexually assaulting five men, in the latest case of such misconduct by a senior Catholic Church official.
Archbishop Luigi Ventura, who served as papal nuncio to France until December 2019, received a suspended eight-month prison sentence from a court in Paris Wednesday for the assaults, which occurred between 2018 and 2019.
One of the victims, an employee of the city of Paris who was tasked with welcoming the cleric at the mayor’s New Year address in 2019, said the archbishop had groped him in an “insistent and repeated” manner.
The 76-year-old archbishop was convicted in absentia. The court had accepted a note from his doctor saying that he shouldn’t travel from Rome to Paris during the current phase of
the coronavirus pandemic. . . .
. . . . Archbishop Ventura, a longtime Vatican diplomat, is one of several senior members of the Catholic hierarchy accused of sexual misconduct with adults in recent years, adding another dimension to the church’s long-running crisis over the clerical abuse of children.
In June, the pope
reinstated his longtime protégé Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta in a high-level Vatican job, even though he is facing charges of sexual harassment in his native Argentina. . . .
. . . Last month,
a Vatican report showed that Pope Francis and his two immediate predecessors had failed for years to discipline U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for sexual misconduct. . . .
