Catholic officials warn ex-seminarians
Former altar boys’ accusations touch nerve
VATICAN CITY – Catholic officials in Italy have threatened former altar boys of the pope with criminal defamation charges for having publicly accused an older seminarian of sexual misconduct when they lived together at the youth seminary inside the Vatican gardens.
Church lawyers in the diocese of Como have also warned an Italian investigative news program against broadcasting the boys’ claims and have purportedly pressed a church official to recant his suggestion of a cover-up.
The response is indicative of how the allegations of gay sex among altar boys inside the Vatican walls have touched a raw nerve in the Vatican and the Italian church. The reaction has been particularly acute within a small Catholic association, the Opera Don Folci, which runs the St. Pius X preseminary in a palazzo just steps away from where Pope Francis lives.
About a dozen boys, some as young as 13, live in the residence and serve as altar boys for papal Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The accusations concern a former seminarian who is now a young priest for the Como diocese and member of the Don Folci association. Reporter Gaetano Pecoraro interviewed an ex-student who said the seminarian would come into his dorm at night demanding oral sex, starting when he was 13 and continuing until he was 18.
The seminarian was a year older and held a position of authority over the other students, reported the ex-student, who was identified only as “Marco.”
The student’s roommate, Kamil Jarzembowski, said he witnessed dozens of incidents, first denouncing them to seminary officials and then in writing to cardinals and finally the pope in 2014. Church officials say internal church investigations were conducted, though initially not interviewing the boys in question, and the claims were determined to be false.
The accused seminarian, meanwhile, was ordained a priest earlier this year. None of the accusers continued on to the priesthood.
The former students, including another one who reported a groping incident when the seminarian was 20 and he was 15, have gone public with their allegations in a book and series of investigative television reports on the program “Le Iene” (“The Hyenas”). Their testimony prompted the Vatican to announce Nov. 18 that it was reopening an investigation into the case because “new elements” had emerged. The Vatican said it wanted to “shine full light on what really happened.”