An Italian bishop praised by Pope Francis has disputed a court’s ruling that he failed to exercise proper oversight of a priest convicted of sexual abuse.
In an interview published July 26 by Italy’s La Stampa newspaper, Bishop Rosario Gisana insisted that he had “not ‘facilitated the predatory activity’ of anyone,” despite wire-tap recordings of the bishop saying he had “buried” the case of a priest subsequently convicted of abuse.
The Bishop of Piazza Armerina, Sicily, was responding to a 222-page explanation of a March 5 ruling on the case of Fr. Giuseppe Rugolo, a former religion teacher.
Rugolo was sentenced in the first instance by a court in the Sicilian city of Enna to four years and six months for sexual violence and attempted sexual violence against minors.
The priest and the episcopal curia of the Piazza Armerina diocese were ordered jointly to pay compensation, to be determined in a civil court.
The court’s explanation, issued four months after the ruling, said that the bishop had “clearly failed to take any serious necessary initiative to protect the minors of his community and their parents, despite having specific powers conferred within the scope of his function to protect the faithful, facilitating the predatory activity of a priest who had already been reported.”
Gisana told La Stampa that the incidents addressed in the case “occurred before my installation as bishop in Piazza Armerina, in 2014.”
But Gisana’s predecessor rejected any suggestion that he was responsible for mishandling the case.
Retired Archbishop Michele Pennisi, who led the Piazza Armerina diocese from 2002 until 2013, told Italy’s ANSA news agency: “If during my episcopal term I had become aware of these facts which, I must point out, for me constitute a crime, I would not have hesitated to take action.”
The case has generated substantial media coverage in Italy. Rome’s Il Messaggero newspaper said it marked the first time an Italian prosecutor’s office had “strongly highlighted the responsibility of a diocese.”
The case began to develop around 2018, when Antonio Messina sent a written complaint to the diocese, accusing Rugolo of sexually abusing him when he was a minor. Italian media reports say that Messina, who is now in his 30s, also alleged that Rugolo had abused other minors.
After launching an “investigatio praevia,” or preliminary investigation, in 2019, Gisana transferred Rugolo to Ferrara, in northern Italy.
Italian media reports allege that the reason given for the transfer was ill health and suggest that Rugolo worked with children aged 14 to 19 in the new location.
Gisana told La Stampa: “Having become aware of what Antonio Messina presented, I immediately ordered an investigatio praevia that constituted a dutiful moment of verification of what young Messina claimed; as a result of this investigatio, Rugolo’s installation as a parish priest was suspended and he was sent to Ferrara for the reasons expressed in the measure taken at the time.”
In October 2020, Messina reportedly wrote to Pope Francis, expressing frustration at the slow pace of the process.
That year, Messina told police in Enna that Rugolo had sexually abused him between 2009 and 2013, which Rugolo denied.
In April 2021, Rugolo was arrested on charges of aggravated sexual violence against minors. A trial began in October of that year.
According to Italian media reports in November 2021, police intercepted a call between Gisana and Rugolo, in which the bishop is said to have told the priest: “Now the problem is not just yours, the problem is also mine because I buried this story.”
In his La Stampa interview, Rugolo complained that the word “buried” — “insabbiato” in Italian, which can also be translated as “covered up” — had been “decontextualized several times from the dialogue in which it was uttered.”
“I therefore acted based on what I could know at the time of the events and gave full collaboration to the investigating judicial authority,” the bishop said.
The diocese has previously accused media of misrepresenting recorded exchanges between Gisana and Rugolo.
In a November 2023 address to Catholics from Sicily, Pope Francis singled out Gisana for praise.
He said: “I greet Bishop Rosario Gisana of Piazza Armerina: he is good, this bishop, good. He was persecuted, slandered, yet he stood firm, always, just, a just man.”
The pope noted that when he visited Sicily’s capital, Palermo, in 2018, he stopped first at Piazza Armerina to greet the bishop. He did not elaborate on why he described the bishop as “persecuted” and “slandered.”
Following the release of the ruling’s explanation, the parties have 45 days to appeal. Gisana said that diocesan lawyers were examining the text.
In a March statement, a diocesan lawyer suggested that Church authorities were likely to appeal.
Gisana told La Stampa that “a separate and further investigation is underway on this matter for the canonical evaluation of what happened.”
The 65-year-old bishop added: “The facts relating to this matter all took place before 2019, applying the canonical discipline in force at the time. The apostolic letter Vos estis lux mundi was issued by Pope Francis in the form of a motu proprio on May 9, 2019 and updated on March 23, 2023.”
The apostolic letter requires bishops to meet all “obligations established in each place by state laws, particularly those concerning any reporting obligations to the competent civil authorities.”
Vos estis also says it is a canonical crime for bishops to engage in “actions or omissions intended to interfere with or avoid civil investigations or canonical investigations.”
