Through years of scandal, has the Vatican learned nothing?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 17, 2025

Twenty years of scandals, and the Vatican—to be more specific, the Vatican Secretariat of State—has learned nothing.

A priest who was convicted of child pornography has been quietly restored to a senior post at the Secretariat of State, in what one official describes as “an act of mercy.” Mercy? Not mercy toward the teenagers who were exploited by perverts to provide the images that were found in Father Capella’s extensive collection. Not mercy toward the faithful Catholics who, doing their best to uphold the honor of the Church against increasingly caustic critics, have found themselves once again defending the indefensible.

Father Capella served a prison term after his conviction by a Vatican tribunal, so in that sense he has (to use the old expression) “paid his debt to society.” As Christians we believe in redemption, so we pray that his repentance is genuine and he has amended his life. But to put him back in position of responsibility is something more than a failure of judgment; it is a clear indication that the cancer of corruption that was exposed by the sex-abuse scandal is still growing inside the Vatican walls.

How long, O Lord? What will it take to persuade Vatican leaders of the need for radical surgery to remove that cancer?

In the time of Pope Pius V—that’s Saint Pius V, remember—a priest found guilty of such an appalling offense would have been handed over to the state for punishment, probably for execution. Say what you like about the moral liceity of the death penalty; at least that arrangement left no doubt about the Church’s attitude toward sexual depravity.

When Father (then Monsignor) Capella was caught with his cache of pornographic images, he was not handed over to secular prosecutors; the Vatican resisted an American bid for his extradition. Instead he was allowed to flee back to Rome, where he evidently expected more sympathetic treatment.

Sure enough, sympathetic treatment is what he received. Vatican law allows for a sentence of up to twelve years for child pornography; he was given a five-year term. At a separate canonical trial he was faced a range of possible penalties including laicization. Instead he was demoted from “Monsignor” to “Father,” but remained an active priest.

Why such lenient treatment? For the same reason that Marcial Maciel escaped scrutiny for years, the same reason that Cardinal Law was named archpriest of a Roman basilica, the same reason that Theodore McCarrick was sent abroad as a Vatican envoy, the same reason that Father Capella is now back at work: Because the Secretariat of State takes care of its friends.

There is another, more sinister explanation, which grows more plausible with each successive scandal. Maybe so many Vatican officials have been morally compromised, over so many years, that no one is prepared to attack the problem; everyone feels vulnerable, and thus determined to keep the lid on. Maybe sexual misconduct is so widespread that—despite their public protestations—Vatican officials still take it lightly.

What is abundantly clear—and not just in cases of clerical abuse—is that the Secretariat of State writes its own rules. No one who followed the “trial of the century” carefully could possibly believe that the prosecutors exposed all of the financial chicanery that cost the Holy See millions of dollars. No Catholic donor can be comfortable with the fact that Cardinal Becciu, the central figure convicted in that trial, successfully scuttled a plan by the late Cardinal Pell for an independent audit of Vatican offices, nor that the same Cardinal Becciu forced the resignation of the Vatican’s own auditor general, who had reported flagrant evidence of waste and fraud.

Every year, especially around the time of the Peter’s Pence collection, Vatican officials assure us that now—this time—they are really determined to eradicate the corruption. Trust us, they complacently admonish the faithful. At this point, why should we?