A priest who was defended by Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope
Francis, has begun a 15-year prison sentence for the sexual abuse of an
adolescent boy in the 1990s. Fr Julio Cesar Grassi, 57, was the nationally known leader of Buenos Aires' Happy Children Foundation, a centre for troubled boys, at the time the crime took place.
Grassi has consistently maintained his innocence. He told the provincial court in Moron that jailed him on Monday: "The prosecutors have lied and set up a case against me."
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi declined to comment on the case, which is making headlines in Argentina.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in a 2006 interview with the Argentine magazine Veintitres, Cardinal Bergoglio, Fr Grassi had not been suspended from his priestly duties because his case was "different" from other cases of alleged sexual abuse that had emerged at the time.
Youths under his charge first accused Grassi of abuse in 1996. He was eventually convicted of aggravated sexual assault in 2009, but while the appeal process continued he was allowed to live across the road from the youth centre.
After Fr Grassi's conviction in 2009, the Argentine Bishops' Conference, headed by Cardinal Bergoglio, commissioned a legal study defending the priest, the Wall Street Journal reported.