Tony Gentile/Reuters
On Tuesday, the Vatican announced it had placed former archbishop Jozef Wesolowiski of Poland under house arrest while he awaits a criminal trial for sex abuse. The Vatican's criminal court began preliminary hearings against Wesolowiski, who was defrocked earlier this year after the Vatican’s canon law court found him guilty of paying for sex with minors while serving as an ambassador in the Dominican Republic. The verdict made him the most senior figure within the Vatican to be punished for sex abuse. While the church defrocked him, the Vatican came under harsh criticism for trying to handle the issue with an internal proceeding instead of putting him on trial. “It’s encouraging when child-molesting clerics are disciplined, but we are troubled by the Vatican’s continued insistence on handling child sex crimes internally,” a representative for The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests told the Telegraph earlier this year. Due to health concerns, Wesolowiski was imprisoned at home instead of the Vatican's jail.