Argentine bishop at Holy See under investigation

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — The Vatican has confirmed that an Argentine bishop, who resigned suddenly in 2017 for stated health reasons and then landed a top administrative job at the Holy See, is under preliminary investigation after priests accused him of sexual abuse and other misconduct.

The case could become yet another problem for Pope Francis, who is already battling to gain trust from the Roman Catholic flock over his handling of sex abuse and sexual misconduct, stemming in particular from the scandal of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Vatican spokesperson Alessandro Gisotti stressed that the allegations against Argentine Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta only emerged in recent months, nearly a year after Francis created the new position for him as “assessor” of the Holy See’s office of financial administration.

At the time of his resignation, Zanchetta had only asked Francis to let him leave the northern Argentine diocese of Oran because he had difficult relations with its priests and was “unable to govern the clergy,” Gisotti said. Pending the preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual abuse underway in Argentina, the 54-year-old Zanchetta will abstain from work at the Vatican, he said.

Francis’s standing would take another hit if he personally intervened to help out a bishop from his native Argentina — finding a job for him during a Vatican hiring hold-down — and the man later turned out to have credible allegations of misconduct against him.

Zanchetta’s hasty departure from Oran on July 29, 2017, was mired in mystery. He didn’t celebrate a farewell mass, as might be expected, and he issued a cryptic statement saying he had been suffering a “health problem” for some time, had just returned from the Vatican where he presented his resignation to Francis, and needed to leave immediately for treatment.

Zanchetta then disappeared from view until Dec. 19, 2017, when the Vatican announced that he had been named assessor of APSA, the office that manages the Vatican’s vast real estate and other financial holdings. The appointment immediately raised eyebrows, but Zanchetta appeared nevertheless to have settled in well at APSA.