VATICAN CITY — He was the personification of shame in the Vatican, the lone prisoner in the
three-cell jail of the world’s smallest sovereign state. Now, the Rev. Carlo Alberto Capella — convicted of possessing and distributing a “large quantity” of child pornography while serving as a Vatican diplomat in Washington — is presenting
Pope Leo XIV, the new American pontiff, with one of the first challenges of his papacy.
Capella, a 58-year-old Italian priest, was investigated by U.S. and Canadian authorities for almost two years for gathering and sharing child pornography while a senior diplomat at the Holy See’s embassy in Washington. In 2017, the U.S. State Department asked the Vatican to waive his diplomatic immunity, a request it denied. Instead, Capella was recalled to Rome, where he admitted to tracking down “repugnant” images and, in a rare Vatican criminal trial a year later, was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.
In recent weeks, reports have emerged on Catholic blogs of his 2022 release and
quiet return to work at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State. His restoration to the powerful department has outraged advocates for the survivors of abuse by Catholic clerics. They insist that even though he was never accused of sexual abuse, a convicted priest who consumed child pornography has no place in a prominent Vatican office.
