Based on Bishop Zanchetta’s conviction, advocacy groups will likely call for reforms on Vos estis Lux Mundi,addressing conflicts of interest that come with bishops – and even popes – investigate bishops they have known for a long time. 

Newsroom (08/03/2022 10:57 AM, Gaudium Press) The former Bishop of Oran, Argentina, was sentenced March 4 to four and a half years in prison for the sexual abuse of two former seminarians. Bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta was convicted of simple sexual abuse aggravated by his position as a minister of religion in a decision handed down by judges in his former diocese.

Born in 1964, Bishop Zanchetta was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Quilmes in 1991. He later served as executive undersecretary of the Argentine bishops’ conference. In that role, he worked closely with then-Cardinal Jorge Bergolio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who led the conference from 2005-2011.

In 2013, the newly-elected Pope Francis appointed Zanchetta as Bishop of Oran, one of the first episcopal nominations made by the pope. In 2017, however, he resigned from that office at the age of 53 — 22 years before the usual age.

Bishop Zanchetta initially cited health reasons for his early retirement. It later emerged that senior clergy in the diocese had complained, for years, about the Bishop’s conduct, leading to charges of “aggravated continuous sexual abuse” of two adult seminarians. He was convicted on March 4, 2022.

Back in January 2019, the Vatican announced that it had received complaints of sexual abuse against Zanchetta months earlier, in late 2018.

Later that month, Bishop Zanchetta’s former vicar general in Oran, Fr. Juan Jose Manzano, told the Associated Press (AP) that the Vatican had received allegations of sexual abuse of seminarians and financial misconduct by the Bishop as early as 2015, and again in 2017, shortly before he presented his resignation to Pope Francis.

According to Argentine newspaper El Tribuno, one of Bishop Zanchetta’s secretaries accidentally discovered sexually explicit images sent and received from the Bishop’s cell phone in 2015. The secretary alerted authorities, stating that the pictures included “young people” engaged in sexual activity, as well as lewd images of the bishop” himself. 

In October 2015, Pope Francis summoned Zanchetta to Rome for five days. At the time, Zanchetta informed Pope Francis that his phone had been hacked and that the allegations against him were motivated by anti-Pope Francis sentiments.

According to Manzano, “the Holy Father summoned Zanchetta [to Rome] and he justified himself saying that his cellphone had been hacked, and that there were people who were out to damage the image of the pope.”

The Tribune also detailed complaints made against the former Bishop of Oran by priests of his own diocese in 2017, which included financial mismanagement and direct accusations of harassment of seminarians made by the seminary rector.

The complaints were reportedly made to the apostolic nunciature in Buenos Aires in May and June 2017. 

In July, Zanchetta was again summoned to Rome, and on July 29, 2017, he resigned from diocesan leadership for “health reasons.”

Shortly after Pope Francis accepted his resignation in 2017, the pope then appointed Bishop Zanchetta to the role of assessor at the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), the Vatican’s sovereign wealth manager, and government reserve bank and paymaster. Bishop Zanchetta was also reported to be living at the Domus Sanctae Marta, the Vatican hotel and retreat house where Pope Francis also lives.

The allegations surfaced again on a February 2019 report in The Tribune newspaper, on a formal complaint against Zanchetta by three of his diocesan vicars, including Manzano, and by two other senior diocesan priests, as Pope Francis summoned the Bishop to Rome to discuss the matter. Pope Francis reportedly accepted the Bishop’s explanation that his cell phone had been hacked and took no further action.

In a May 2019 interview with Valentina Alazraki, a Mexican journalist for Televisa, Pope Francis responded to the criticism he received for having appointed Zanchetta as assessor to APSA in 2017.

The pope clarified that some described the Bishop as “despot, bossy, well, financial management of things is not entirely clear, it seems, this isn’t proven. But certainly the clergy felt they were not well treated by him” so “as clergy they made a complaint to the Nunciature.”

The pontiff said he called the Nuncio, who stressed that “the complaint [was] serious… mistreatment, abuse of power, we could say, right?” The pope said he then sent Zanchetta to Spain “to take a psychiatric test.” The test result “was within the normal range,” Francis explains. Doctors advised that he receive therapy once a month in Madrid, so Zanchetta didn’t return to Argentina.

Regarding the criticism for alleged financial mismanagement, Pope Francis expressed that “financially he was messy, but there was no financial mismanagement because of the things he worked on. He was messy, but the vision was good.”

Pope Francis explained that after receiving the results of the preliminary investigation on Zanchetta in 2019, “I saw that a trial was necessary. So I passed it on to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where they are conducting the trial.” And concluded: “How the trial will end, I don’t know, I leave it in their hands.”

When the Vatican verified allegations of sexual abuse against Zanchetta in 2019, the Bishop took of absence from his position at APSA. Vatican officials reported a canonical investigation to examine the allegations against the Bishop.

But Bishop Zanchetta returned to Vatican work in early 2020, despite ongoing criminal and canonical investigations into the allegations against him. The Bishop left his role at APSA in June 2021, leaving Vatican City ahead of his trial, scheduled for February 21, 2022.

Ahead of the trial, Zanchetta’s attorneys subpoenaed the Vatican’s files on the canonical investigation and trial of Zanchetta at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. According to The Tribune, the prosecution in Argentina was on hold as the court waited for the pertaining documents. 

Despite measures taken by Pope Francis to declassify Church reports on cases of sexual abuse, including a 2020 Vatican policy requiring diocesan bishops to cooperate with judicial orders for Church documents, the Zanchetta files did not arrive in Argentina. Therefore, the Argentine Justice demanded to proceed with the trial without them.

On the conviction of Zanchetta, critics raise questions about the credibility of Pope Francis, as a close friend of Bishop Zanchetta, on handling abuse allegations. 

It could also cast a shadow over the pope’s signature reform effort, Vos estis lux mundi, promulgated in the wake of the Theodore McCarrick scandal.

Vos estis lux mundi was approved for an experimental period, due to expire later this year. At that point, the pope will be tasked with either confirming it indefinitely or making modifications. Based on Zanchetta’s case, advocacy groups will likely call for reforms addressing conflicts of interest that come with bishops – and even popes – investigate bishops they have known for a long time. Advocacy groups may also question the policy’s relative silence on what a bishop should be permitted to do or not do when he is accused of misconduct.

Meanwhile, Bishop Zanchetta has not been laicized or even publicly sanctioned by the Vatican for the actions earning him four years of jail. If Francis decides to acknowledge the experiences learned from the Zanchetta ordeal, his next step might be addressing the Bishop’s canonical status. 

(Via CNA and The Pillar)

Compiled by Raju Hasmuk