Vatican cleric sentenced for child porn

VATICAN CITY — A Vatican tribunal Saturday sentenced a former Vatican diplomat to five years in prison and a fine of about $5,800 for possessing and distributing child pornography.

The Vatican has been embroiled for decades in a global scandal involving the sexual abuse of minors, but this was the first time in modern history that a sentence had been reached in its own tribunal in a trial of its kind. A Vatican spokeswoman said the envoy who was sentenced, Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella, would now face a canonical trial, which could lead to his removal from the priesthood.

The trial was held over two days, and the hearings lasted less than four hours. The judges took just over an hour to arrive at a verdict.

Capella was impassive when the presiding judge, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, read out the sentence, according to reporters in the courthouse inside Vatican City.

Capella had not contested the charges against him, and during the first hearing, on Friday, he admitted to “com- pulsive acts of improper internet consultations” of photographs, videos and cartoons showing adolescent minors engaged in sexually explicit acts. He told the court that he had been going through a personal crisis because he was unhappy to have been transferred to the Holy See’s embassy in Washington.

The Vatican recalled Capella from Washington in September, shortly after the State Department had notified it of a “possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images” by one of the Vatican’s diplomats there.