Vatican, international arrest order for bishop Gustavo Zanchetta: accused of abuse
The judiciary in Argentina issued an international arrest warrant against Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, accused of the crime of simple and continued sexual abuse against two seminarians, aggravated by the fact that he was committed by a minister of worship. In 2017 Zanchetta was called to the Vatican by Bergoglio.
The magistracy of Salta, Argentina, issued an international arrest warrant against the Argentine bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, domiciled in the Vatican. The religious, fifty-four years old, is accused of the crime of simple and continued sexual abuse of two seminarians, aggravated by the fact that it was committed by a minister of worship. The crimes Zanchetta is accused of were already known and the news from Argentina of the request for arrest comes while Pope Francis is not in the Vatican, but on a trip to Thailand. The prosecutor María Soledad Filtrín decided to issue the mandate to the bishop considered close to Pope Francis, after the same did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails sent to him to proceed with the notification of the procedural documents and after his decision to establish his domicile in the Vatican State.
In 2017 Monsignor Zanchetta was recalled to Rome by the Pope – Gustavo Zanchetta resigned from the diocese of Oran, in northern Argentina, in July 2017 and subsequently he had been called to the Vatican by the Pope who appointed him councilor of Apsa (Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See). Last June, the prosecutor of the Argentine province of Salta, Monica Viazzi, accused the bishop of “continuing aggravated sexual abuse”. For the first time, the indictment was formalized in a court.
Pope authorized bishop trial in Vatican – Bergoglio himself commented on the affair in recent months, revealing in an interview with Mexican TV Televisa that Zanchetta is on trial in the Vatican for the same charges for which he was also targeted in his country of origin. “About fifteen days ago the preliminary investigation officially arrived. I read it, and saw that it was necessary to go through a trial. So I passed it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the Pontiff said in the interview -, they are in the process. “The Argentine bishop is accused of having sexually assaulted two seminarians while he was diocesan ordinary and therefore before leaving office and being transferred to the Vatican to the office that administers the patrimony of the Holy See.
