Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
The dome of St. Peter's Basilica is pictured at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)    

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Two priests connected to a minor seminary located at the Vatican will appear before a Vatican criminal court Oct. 14 on charges related to the alleged sexual abuse of students at the seminary.

Father Gabriele Martinelli faces charges of sexually abusing younger boys when he was a seminarian at the St. Pius X Pre-Seminary. Father Enrico Radice, former rector of the seminary, is accused of aiding and abetting the abuse.

The two were indicted in late 2019 following an investigation that began in November 2017.

Since the alleged abuse was said to have occurred prior to 2012, the Vatican had said a year ago, the court's request to indict the two priests required the personal intervention of Pope Francis because at the time the crimes allegedly occurred, Vatican law required the victim himself to make the accusation within one year of the crime's occurrence.

The pre-seminary is run by the Diocese of Como, Italy, but located inside the Vatican. Boys in middle school and high school live there, serve Mass at St. Peter's Basilica and attend a Catholic school in Rome while considering applying to a seminary when they are older.

Reports of abuse at the pre-seminary began circulating in 2013 and were investigated by staff and the Diocese of Como, the Vatican had said in 2018 when it opened its own criminal investigation following media reports and a book that repeated the allegations.

In his book, "Original Sin," the Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, whose books based on leaked Vatican documents were at the heart of two other Vatican trials, had written about one student sexually abusing another at the seminary.

The Italian television program "Le Iene" followed up with a program featuring an interview with a young Polish man, identified only as 21-year-old Kamil, who said he arrived at the pre-seminary at age 13, wanting to be an altar server for the pope. He said he was thinking only vaguely of becoming a priest one day.

Kamil claimed another student, one given responsibility by the rector for determining the liturgical roles of all the students at papal Masses, regularly sexually abused his roommate.

Kamil said the older student would come into their room at night, get into bed with his roommate and abuse him. The alleged abuser was ordained to the priesthood in June 2017, "Le Iene" reported.

Father Martinelli, 29, now a priest of the Diocese of Como, allegedly is the older seminarian. Italian authorities have been conducting their own investigation of him.

We don’t have comments turned on everywhere anymore. We have recently relaunched the commenting experience at America and are aiming for a more focused commenting experience with better moderation by opening comments on a select number of articles each day.

But we still want your feedback. You can join the conversation about this article with us in social media on Twitter or Facebook, or in one of our Facebook discussion groups for various topics.

Or send us feedback on this article with one of the options below:

We welcome and read all letters to the editor but, due to the volume received, cannot guarantee a response.

In order to be considered for publication, letters should be brief (around 200 words or less) and include the author’s name and geographic location. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

We open comments only on select articles so that we can provide a focused and well-moderated discussion on interesting topics. If you think this article provides the opportunity for such a discussion, please let us know what you'd like to talk about, or what interesting question you think readers might want to respond to.

If we decide to open comments on this article, we will email you to let you know.

If you have a message for the author, we will do our best to pass it along. Note that if the article is from a wire service such as Catholic News Service, Religion News Service, or the Associated Press, we will not have direct contact information for the author. We cannot guarantee a response from any author.

We welcome any information that will help us improve the factual accuracy of this piece. Thank you.

Please consult our Contact Us page for other options to reach us.

City and state/province, or if outside Canada or the U.S., city and country. 
When you click submit, this article page will reload. You should see a message at the top of the reloaded page confirming that your feedback has been received.

The latest from america

“Meet Me in St. Louis” asks: How do you have hope when the future holds so many unknowns?
John DoughertyDecember 13, 2024
Photo of Jean Charlot, ca. 1923, by Tina Modotti; woodcut of “Rich People in Hell” by Jean Charlot (Copyright the Jean Charlot Estate LLC. With permission)
Jean Charlot was the friend and peer of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and other now-renowned Mexican muralists. But in one important way, he was not one of them.
Lawrence Downes December 13, 2024
Although there are many ways to donate during the Christmas season, the giving trees may be the most meaningful to me. This format for giving provides an intimacy not always present through other forms of donating.
Leilani FuentesDecember 13, 2024
On this week’s episode of “Jesuitical,” Zac and Ashley interview bestselling Irish author John Connell on how embracing the farm life preserved by his family for generations brought him closer to God and greater inner peace.
JesuiticalDecember 13, 2024