Vatican City • The Vatican tribunal convicted a former Holy See diplomat Saturday 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. He apologized to his family and the Holy See, and appealed for leniency by saying the episode was just a “bump in the road” of a priestly vocation he loved and wanted to continue.