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CV NEWS FEED // An Argentinian bishop sentenced to prison for sexual abuse crimes who was allowed to travel to Rome for medical treatment is reportedly expected to return to Argentina this week, according to Italian Catholic outlet the New Daily Compass.
The Daily Compass noted in its Feb. 11 report that when Bishop Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta was in Rome during the years 2017 through 2020, “it was easy to meet” with him. However, that public availability draws a stark contrast when compared to how little information is available about his residence at the hospital in Rome in November 2024, the outlet added. When contrasted, the outlet wrote that the latter trip almost appears “to have taken place under the banner of maximum secrecy.”
Bishop Zanchetta had served as the bishop of the Diocese of Orán from 2013 to 2017, when he stepped down citing “health reasons,” according to the National Catholic Register. He was subsequently appointed as an assessor at the Vatican’s Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, but “was later suspended, and then controversially reinstated, to that role amid a canonical investigation into his conduct,” the Register reported.
In February 2019, the Congregation for Bishops ordered a preliminary canonical investigation into sexual abuse claims made against Bishop Zanchetta, according to the Register. A former seminarian who was a victim of sexual abuse by Bishop Zanchetta eventually reported the abuse to civil officials. In March 2022, an Argentinian court found Bishop Zanchetta guilty of sexually abusing two seminarians and sentenced him to four and a half years in prison.
According to the Daily Compass, Bishop Zanchetta served four months in prison before being placed on house arrest instead, for health reasons, at a private clinic and then at the Nuestra Señora del Valle convent. In November 2024, Bishop Zanchetta received permission from an Argentinian court to travel to Rome for medical treatment.
The Daily Compass posited, based on undisclosed sources, that Bishop Zanchetta requested to go to the Gemelli Policlinico to treat heart problems. Earlier this month, an Argentinian Court of Appeals confirmed the multi-year prison sentence, citing the victims’ testimonies as “an incriminating element of great value, since their accounts are consistent and provide details of the situations in which they found themselves,” according to the outlet.
However, apart from the fact that Bishop Zanchetta arrived in Rome in November 2024, “nothing is known about his possible admission to the Gemelli hospital,” the Daily Compass reported. “Sources close to the Argentine judiciary have informed us that the judges expect him to return [to Argentina] this week.”
“Meanwhile, many of Orán’s faithful remain on the warpath, especially faced with the prospect of Zanchetta returning to serve his sentence in a convent in his former diocese,” the Daily Compass later concluded, “in the same premises where a Sardinian missionary who signed a letter against the then bishop’s behaviour once lived.”
