A priest who was jailed in Vatican City for possession and distribution of child pornography has returned to work in the Holy See’s diplomatic service.
Father Carlo Alberto Capella, formerly a high ranking diplomat in the apostolic nunciature in Washington, D.C., was in 2018 sentenced to five years in prison by a Vatican City court for “possession and distribution of child pornography with the aggravating circumstance of its large quantity.”
After serving his sentence in Vatican City, in a cell in the barracks of the Vatican gendarmerie, The Pillar has confirmed he has remained in Vatican City and was allowed to resume work in the second section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, the diplomatic department.
News of Capella’s rehabilitation first surfaced on Saturday, when the InfoVaticana web site reported that the priest had been seen in the Vatican and was “probably active in ‘internal tasks.’”
Sources close to the Secretariat of State told The Pillar that Capella was permitted to return to work at the department in 2023, after the end of his prison sentence, and had been reintroduced to the office in “an act of mercy.” He had been initially allowed to work without title or official designation, but in 2025, the priest appeared on the Vatican’s official list of departmental officials for the first time.
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While Capella was incarcerated, his former Vatican colleagues visited him and remained close to him, according to multiple sources close to the Secretariat of State, since the circumstances of his confinement meant he had practically no outside visitors.
From there, The Pillar was told, it was decided to assist with finding a living situation for Capella upon his eventual release, and then some opportunity for him to assist the Vatican’s work.
One source with first-hand knowledge of the situation recalled that Capella was brought to the Secretariat of State’s office by Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the head of the second section and the Vatican’s foreign secretary.
“It was clearly presented as an act of mercy,” the official said. “The intention was that this man, who had not been laicized but clearly could not return to his diocese or serve in a parish, could collaborate in the office, and remain in the Vatican where he is effectively secluded, but without a formal office.”
Another official told The Pillar that after Capella’s release from prison, the priest “had to go somewhere, and has to do something” and that allowing him to resume work in the secretariat was seen as “a kind of Christian charity.”
“What else could he do?” the official said. “There should be a scope for reasonable mercy — and at least up to a point it was reasonable in this case. He was not exercising some public ministry, he had no contact with minors, he was working quietly and usefully, and he was full of contrition for what he had done. There was no scandal.”
Both officials said the initial understanding was that Capella would work as a speechwriter and contribute to the drafting of reports without official designation, office, or rank. But something appears to have recently changed, with the 2025 edition of the Annuario Pontificio listing the priest formally among the officials of the diplomatic section.
Capella is classed among the minutanti, or senior clerks, with his name appearing alongside several section heads in the department.
One source close to the second section told The Pillar that there is internal confusion about how Capella came to be listed in the annuario at all, let alone billed alongside senior officials, and that people working in the office were shocked to see his name appear on the department’s official register.
“Everyone I know believes this is over the limit, no one understands how this decision was made,” the official said. “This is the opposite of what was supposed to be the point, that he could do some useful service while living a closed life, not giving scandal.”
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Capella made international headlines in 2017, when the priest was working in the Vatican’s apostolic nunciature in Washington, D.C.
The priest fled the nunciature for Rome after U.S. State Department officials approached the Holy See with concerns that Capella had downloaded child pornography.
In the same year, Canadian authorities issued a nationwide arrest warrant for the cleric on charges of possession and distribution of child pornography, alleged to have occurred during a trip to Windsor, Ontario, over the Christmas period the previous year.
U.S. officials in 2017 broached the subject of extraditing the priest, but Vatican officials were not inclined to waive diplomatic immunity, which would have allowed him to face U.S. criminal charges, according to several media reports at the time.
After his return to the Vatican in 2017, Capella remained in the city state until he was arrested by Vatican officials the next year on charges of child pornography possession, which was made a Vatican City criminal offense in 2013.
During a two-day trial, Capella admitted to possessing and viewing the images during what he termed a “period of fragility” after his transfer to Washington in 2016. The priest expressed regret for his actions during the trial, and called his crimes a “bump in the road” not reflective of his priestly vocation.
Vatican prosecutors found more than 40 criminal images and videos on devices belonging to the priest, which were divided into two categories at trial — Japanese-style animations depicting obscene material, and pornographic images and videos of minors aged 14-17, with the most serious showing a minor engaged in a direct sexual act with an adult.
Capella received and shared the images and videos in private messages exchanged on Tumblr, the social media app.
Although Capella was sentenced to five years in prison and a 5,000 euro fine, Vatican prosecutors had argued for harsher sentencing in light of the “excessive amount of child pornography material” found in his possession. Vatican City law allows for sentences of up to 12 years for possession of child pornography.
While the Vatican City tribunal sentenced the priest to five years in prison, Capella was also subject to a separate canonical trial reserved to the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has canonical competence in cases of clerical sexual crimes involving minors.
According to the norms of Sacromentorum sanctitatis tutela, “the acquisition, possession, or distribution by a cleric of pornographic images of minors … is to be punished according to the gravity of his crime, not excluding dismissal or deposition [from the clerical state].”
Officials close to the DDF confirmed to The Pillar that the general praxis of the dicastery had, before Capella’s case, already evolved to apply the penalty of dismissal from the clerical state for proven instances of child pornography.
Capella was not laicized, but the priest did lose the rank of monsignor in the canonical process. One senior dicastery canonist told The Pillar the outcome could have been impacted by several factors.
“It could have been that there were problems with the evidence or it could have been that the nature of the images wasn’t considered to be [of] the ‘most grave’ variety,” the official said.
“But it is most likely the case that this is just another example of the Secretariat of State having its own rules,” the official speculated.
Officials at the DDF have, for years, complained privately of attempted interference in reserved cases by the Secretariat of State, either through attempting to influence and pressure dicastery officials or, in some instances, by attempting to void the DDF’s decisions outright.
In some cases, the doctrinal office has resorted to forwarding confidential case files and decisions through personal couriers or via local diocesan bishops instead of through the Vatican’s network of nunciatures, because, as one official put it, “[the Secretariat of State] would simply intercept and read all the mail and take it on themselves to get involved.”
Fr. Capella was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Milan in 1993, and sent to study and serve in the Vatican’s diplomatic service by Carlo Maria Maritini. A canon lawyer by training, Capella wrote his 2003 dissertation on clerical celibacy and the Church penal code.
Editor’s note: The Pillar initially attributed news of Fr. Capella’s presence in the Vatican incorrectly; it was first reported July 12 by InfoVaticana. This report has been corrected accordingly.