VATICAN CITY — The Vatican tribunal has convicted a former Holy See diplomat and sentenced him to five years in prison for possessing and distributing child pornography in the first such trial of its kind inside the Vatican.

Monsignor Carlo Capella admitted to viewing the images during what he called a period of “fragility” and interior crisis sparked by a job transfer to the Vatican embassy in Washington.

Tribunal President Giuseppe Dalla Torre read out the verdict Saturday after a two-day trial that ended with Capella appealing for a lenience sentence by saying the episode was just a “bump in the road” of a priestly vocation he loved and wanted to continue.

Dalla Torre said that Capella continued to access the material even after he had been recalled by the Vatican in August 2017.


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