Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta

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Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta (born February 28, 1964 in Rosario ) is an Argentine clergyman and emeritus Roman Catholic Bishop of Orán .

Life

In 1982 Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta completed an apprenticeship as an electrician at the vocational school in La Cumbre in the Argentine province of Córdoba . He belonged to the Franciscan Youth , an ecclesiastical youth group organized by the convent of the Capuchins in La Cumbre, and worked for the volunteer fire department in the village. In the local Capuchin convent he spent a year as a postulant and then also completed the novitiate of the Capuchin Order, which he soon left. He began his philosophical and theological studies in 1984 at the Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires and lived in neighboring Quilmes , where he entered the diocesan seminary under Bishop Jorge Novak SVD , who enjoyed a high reputation as a human rights activist within the church and society .

Zanchetta was ordained a priest for the diocese of Quilmes on December 13, 1991 . There he served in various parishes in the pastoral care worked, including as vicar and as pastor of a church in Berazategui . In addition, he exercised various administrative functions in his diocese and was, among other things, economist at the episcopal seminary. From September 1998 to June 2000 he lived in the papal Latin American college "Pius" in Rome and obtained a licentiate in fundamental theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University .

After returning to his diocese, he was appointed episcopal vicar for economic issues and also served as general representative of the schools in the diocese. Until his appointment as bishop, he was also the chief undersecretary of the Argentine Roman Catholic Bishops 'Conference , where he worked closely with the Argentine bishops and the then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio , who was chairman of the Argentine Bishops' Conference from 2005 to 2011. Already between 2009 and 2013 there were allegations of mismanagement and financial irregularities against Zanchetta in the Quilmes diocese, which he was later accused of in Orán. Critics among his employees describe him as dominant, resentful and gruff.

During World Youth Day 2013 in Rio de Janeiro , Pope Francis ' first trip abroad , the appointment of Gustavo Zanchetta as Bishop of Orán was announced. The diocese is located in a region on the northern border of Argentina in the province of Salta, which is described as "deeply conservative" and is characterized by poverty and drug - related crime . The appointment by Pope Francis took place on July 23, 2013; on August 19 of the same year the Archbishop of Corrientes , Andrés Stanovnik OFM Cap , donated his episcopal ordination ; Co- consecrators were the Bishop of Quilmes , Carlos José Tissera , his predecessor as Bishop of Orán and Bishop of La Rioja , Marcelo Daniel Colombo , the Bishop of San Isidro , Óscar Vicente Ojea Quintana , and Enrique Eguía Seguí , Auxiliary Bishop in Buenos Aires .

Immediately after his appointment there was resistance, a petition by former employees of Zanchettas from Quilmes on Change.org called on the Pope to reconsider the personnel. Zanchetta is said to be friends with Pope Francis, is considered to be well connected in political and economic circles and is said to have supported the ruling provincial governor of Salta in the 2015 election campaign. On July 29, 2017, Zanchetta left his diocese hastily, allegedly for health reasons, and was initially accepted in the Archdiocese of Corrientes, 900 km away . After only four years in office, Pope Francis accepted his resignation as Bishop of Orán on August 1, 2017. After an interim stay in Spain , where he took part in the opening ceremony of the academic year at the Ecclesiastical University of San Dámaso (UESD) in Madrid in September 2017 , the Pope appointed him Assessor of the Assets Management of the Apostolic See in Rome on December 19, 2017 , a newly created post without managerial responsibility, on which he should deal with questions of real estate management. According to a spokesman, he was appointed to the Vatican "considering his ability in administration".

According to research by the Argentine newspaper El Tribuno , which was published in December 2018, the real reason for his flight from the diocese and the subsequent deposition by the Pope was the indictment of three priests who Zanchetta is said to have previously punished. They charged him with the misuse of church funds, the sexual abuse of three seminarians and the abuse of power against ten other seminarians in order to cover up the acts. According to statements by those involved, the small seminary that Zanchetta had established herself in 2014 was mainly attended by young men from simple backgrounds who were afraid of Zanchetta. The cases are said to have occurred in 2014 and 2015. After uncovering these connections, Zanchetta is said to have threatened and intimidated several priests from his former diocese by telephone in December 2018.

In response to inquiries at the beginning of January 2019, the spokesman for the Vatican said that the reason for resigning as Bishop of Orán was Zanchetta's difficult relationship with his own clergy. The bishop was accused of authoritarian behavior. However, there were no allegations of sexual abuse at the time. He was also not deposed by the Pope, as reported by the Argentine media, but rather resigned from his office. The Orán diocese had previously stated that there had been no punitive transfers and that the personnel measures had been carried out exclusively from a pastoral point of view. Zanchetta's successor, Bishop Luis Antonio Scozzina , called on potential victims of sexual abuse to report to the responsible church authorities or the state judiciary.

According to a former vicar general of Zanchetta, Juan José Manzano, who spoke to the American news agency AP on the case in January 2019 , there have been indications of misconduct, including sexual misconduct, in previous years, but only on informal channels to Rome were forwarded without initiating an official investigation. In this context, Zanchetta was called to a conversation with the Pope in 2015, to whom he denied the allegations (offensive pictures on the cell phone) and presented them as the result of manipulations by his opponents. It was only two years later, in May or June 2017, shortly before Zanchetta's flight from the diocese, that Manzano and the rector of the seminary had submitted a complaint about the apostolic nunciature in Buenos Aires , which the nunciature councilor Vincenzo Turturro (deputy of the then nuncio in Argentina, the Swiss Emil Tscherrig ) to Rome. In addition to "a question about sexual abuse" it was about the general decline of the diocese under Zanchetta's leadership. Manzano rejected assumptions by the Argentine press that there had been active cover-up efforts in the Vatican in favor of Zanchetta's.

According to Roman reports, the abuse victims only turned to the Nuncio in Argentina, the Congolese Kalenga Badikebele , who was appointed in March 2018 after Zanchetta's appointment as assessor . The Vatican spokesman confirmed at the beginning of January 2019 that internal preliminary investigations of the Vatican against Zanchetta are ongoing because of the allegations of abuse and that he is suspending his office as assessor of the curia . At the beginning of February 2019 it became known that the public prosecutor's office in Orán had started preliminary investigations into sexual abuse against the former bishop after a victim who, like Gustavo Zanchetta, belonged to the Capuchin order, filed a criminal complaint.

The on-site ecclesiastical investigation was carried out on behalf of the Vatican Congregation for Bishops by Carlos Alberto Sánchez , Archbishop of Tucumán , who arrived in Salta in March 2019 to collect testimony from seminarians. In an interview published on May 28, 2019 with Valentina Alazraki (* 1955) for the Mexican television broadcaster Televisa , Pope Francis said he had read the archbishop's report and believed that Gustavo Zanchetta should be tried under canonical law. This will take place at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, which is responsible for investigating and prosecuting sexual misconduct by clerics . The Pope admitted he ordered Zanchetta to resign in 2017 after clergy complaints about the nunciature reached him. He then sent him to Spain for a psychiatric examination, which did not reveal any significant abnormalities, and then "parked" him in Rome while the succession was settled in Orán, and later arranged for the archbishop of Tucumán to conduct a preliminary church examination.

On June 6, 2019, the public prosecutor in Orán opened a formal investigation into the allegation of continued sexual abuse by a clergyman of a recognized religious community. The accused, who had recently been in Rome, appeared in person at the opening date. Gustavo Zanchetta was banned from leaving Argentina and his passport was retained for the duration of the proceedings. Five other cases of sexual abuse against clergymen, including a former religious, are currently pending in the province of Salta.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Mariano De Vedia: Quién es Zanchetta, el exobispo argentino que trabaja en el Vaticano y es investigado por abuso sexual. In: La Nación , January 4, 2019, accessed February 9, 2019 (Spanish).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Roland Juchem: The 53-year-old who rose from the bishop's seat and disappeared. In: kathisch.de . December 21, 2017. Retrieved February 9, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b Anian Christoph Wimmer (transl.): Former Vicar General: The Vatican already knew about allegations against Zanchetta in 2015. In: EWTN / CNA , January 21, 2019, accessed on February 13, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b c d Un prelado cuestionado por desmanejos financieros . In: El Tribuno , Salta edition, August 12, 2017, accessed February 9, 2019 (Spanish).
  5. ↑ a b c d e Almudena Calatrava, Natacha Pisarenko, Nicole Winfield: Argentine Official: Vatican City Knew. In: Valley News , January 20, 2019, accessed February 13, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b Silvia Noviasky: Nuevos documentos del caso Zanchetta complican a la Iglesia. In: El Tribuno , Salta edition, February 21, 2019, accessed on February 25, 2019 (Spanish).
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Salvatore Cernuzio: Sotto indagine per abusi il vescovo argentino assessore dell'Apsa. In: La Stampa , January 4, 2019, accessed February 9, 2019 (Italian).
  8. ↑ a b c d Silvia Noviasky: Denuncian amenazas de Zanchetta . In: El Tribuno , Salta edition, December 30, 2018, accessed February 9, 2019 (Spanish).
  9. ^ Rinuncia del Vescovo di Orán (Argentina). In: Daily Bulletin . August 1, 2017, accessed August 1, 2017 (Italian).
  10. ^ A b c d e newspaper: Public prosecutor investigates Bishop Zanchetta. In: kathisch.de. February 8, 2019, accessed February 9, 2019 .
  11. ^ Nomina dell'Assessore dell'Amministrazione del Patrimonio della Sede Apostolica (APSA). In: Daily Bulletin . December 19, 2017, accessed February 9, 2019 (Italian).
  12. ↑ a b c Javier Firpo: Escándalo en Orán: afirman que su obispo fue desplazado por denuncias de abuso sexual y de poder . In: Clarín , December 28, 2018, accessed February 9, 2019 (Spanish).
  13. ^ Former vicar: Vatican already knew about sexual abuse allegations against Argentine bishop. In: EWTN / CNA, January 21, 2019, accessed on February 13, 2019 (English, based on the translation by Wimmer, who translated the decisive paragraph in a distorted manner).
  14. ↑ a b Julio Algañaraz: Denunciaron penalmente por abuso sexual al cura Gustavo Zanchetta, un amigo del papa Francisco. In: Clarín , February 12, 2019, accessed on February 18, 2019 (Spanish).
  15. ↑ a b c Juan Manuel Urtubey: Salta, entre las tres provincias con más curas acusados ​​por abuso sexual. In: El Tribuno , Salta edition, June 2, 2019, accessed June 9, 2019 (Spanish).
  16. ^ El Arzobispo de Tucumán investiga las denuncias contra el ex obispo de la diócesis norteña. In: LV12 , March 21, 2019, accessed June 10, 2019 (Spanish).
  17. ↑ Stefan von Kempis, Gudrun Sailer : Big Pope Interview for Mexican Television. In: Vatican News , May 28, 2019, accessed June 5, 2019.
  18. ↑ En primicia el Papa en Televisa: “El mundo sin la mujer no funciona”. In: Vatican News , May 28, 2019, accessed June 5, 2019 (Spanish).
  19. ^ Anian Christoph Wimmer: Pope Franziskus: Proceedings for sexual misconduct against Bishop Zanchetta. CNA, May 29, 2019, accessed June 5, 2019.
  20. ↑ El papa Francisco admitió que las conocia denunciations que sobre el pesaban exobispo Zanchetta . In: El Tribuno , Salta edition, May 28, 2019, accessed June 9, 2019 (Spanish).
  21. ↑ Prohíben a Zanchetta salir del país, fue imputado por abuso sexual y le Haran pericias psicológicas . In: El Tribuno , Salta edition, June 7, 2019, accessed June 9, 2019 (Spanish).
predecessor Office successor
Marcelo Daniel Colombo Bishop of Orán
2013–2017 		Luis Antonio Scozzina OFM
personal data
SURNAME Zanchetta, Gustavo Óscar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentine clergyman, emeritus Roman Catholic Bishop of Orán
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Rosario , Argentina