A former Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic has been placed under house arrest in what may be the first stage of criminal proceedings by the Holy See in a case of sexual abuse of children.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi on Tuesday said Pope Francis had personally ordered swift action in the case of Polish former archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who was convicted of sex abuse by a church tribunal in June and defrocked pending further criminal proceedings.
Lombardi said the legal move was "the result of the Pope's express wish for a case this serious and sensitive to be dealt with without delay, with the necessary scrupulousness and full undertaking of responsibility on the part of the institutions which head up the Holy See".
If the case goes to trial, it will be the first for sex abuse within the tiny city state.
Wesolowski's defrocking came six months after the UN children's rights watchdog highlighted his case as an example of the Vatican's failure to take concrete actions to prove its commitment to stamp out the abuse of minors by priests.
Wesolowski, 65, had been ambassador to the Dominican Republic since 2008, but was recalled by Pope Francis last August following accusations of sexually abusing minors.
He was ordained in 1972 by then archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who later became Pope John Paul II and was elevated to sainthood this year.
The late pontiff named Wesolowski the Vatican's envoy to Bolivia and he was later posted to several Asian countries before being dispatched to the Dominican Republic in 2008 by then Pope Benedict XVI.
Press reports last year linked him with another Polish priest, Wojciech Gil, accused of raping boys while serving on the Caribbean island.
Pope Francis has vowed to crack down on abuse in the Catholic Church, reiterating the zero-tolerance approach of his predecessor.
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