VATICAN CITY: A former Polish archbishop became ill and was placed in intensive care ahead of the opening of his unprecedented trial on paedophilia charges at the Vatican, officials said on Saturday.

Jozef Wesolowski is accused of sexually abusing minors during his 2008-13 stint as Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic and of possessing child pornography in Rome in 2013-14.

His case is seen as a test of Pope Francis’s push to prosecute sexual predators in the face of accusations that the Catholic Church has not done enough to identify and punish paedophiles in its midst.

The hospitalisation of the 66-year-old reduced the first day of his trial, which was open to the public, to seven minutes before the judge recessed until a later, unspecified date.

Wesolowski “was taken ill and was taken to a ... hospital where he was placed in intensive care,” prosecutor Gian Piero Milano told the court, with Vatican officials saying that the former cleric became sick on Friday.

When the trial reconvenes, Wesolowski’s lawyers may motion for it to continue in closed session.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2015

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