By Jaime Gurpegui | July 12, 2025
Carlo Alberto Capella: the exemplary reintegration of a Vatican pedophile
In June 2018, InfoVaticana reported the sentence to five years in prison of the priest Carlo Alberto Capella for possession and exchange of child pornography. Capella, a former diplomat of the Holy See in Washington, was not only not extradited - as requested by the US authorities - but, after his return to Rome, he enjoyed freedom of movement within the Vatican for months before his late arrest. Today, seven years later, we discover that the reintegration of this criminal has not consisted of taking care of his elderly mother in a remote parish, but of living in San Benedetto, the residence intended for the nuncios, a few meters from where Pope Leo XIV himself resides.
The information, confirmed by an eyewitness who was with him in the last few hours, shows that Capella is not only free, but protected and probably active in "internal tasks." What kind? We don't know, but in any case, it doesn't seem that his depraved history has prevented his integration into the clerical circuits closest to power. Everything indicates that the lavender mafia, far from dissolving, continues to grant safe conduct to its fallen members.
Capella, 51, who admitted the charges of child pornography, performed diplomatic duties for the Vatican that took him from India to Hong Kong to the point of Washington's nunciature. Originally incardinated in the Archdiocese of Milan, Capella was an assistant priest when in 2001 the influential Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, inspirer of the so-called 'Mafia of Sankt Gallen, proposed him to enter the diplomatic service of the Holy See.
The mafia of St. Gallen, to which the previous Pope owed his pontificate, is still, it seems, active and with command in the square.
Reinsertion? No: institutional cover-up
Meanwhile, hundreds of traditional priests are punished without altar, without parish, without the right to a Mass in peace. But Capella lives in an elite residence. As we are well reminded of from Rome, they protect each other. It's not the first time. Nor will it be the last.
Theodore McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington, predator for decades, was protected by high officials until public pressure made him unsustainable.
Gustavo Zanchetta, the Argentine bishop close to Francisco, convicted of sexual abuse of seminarians, was "welcomed" in the Vatican for a labor reinvention between administrative papers, fleeing civil justice with the help of Bergoglio.
Francesco Coccopalmerio, an influential cardinal, not only sponsored careers like Capella's, but his secretary was arrested in the middle of a homosexual orgy with drugs... in an apartment owned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who knows if the same apartment later assigned to Cardinal Prevost, who still resides today, as Pope, in that building.
And now, Capella. An accredited consumer of child pornography awarded with a second chance... in the very center of ecclesiastical power.
San Benedetto: lair of impunity
The San Benedetto residence is not a simple building. It's a symbol. Senior officials of Vatican diplomacy are staying there. Mons also lived there. Bertomeu when arriving in Rome, for example. And today Capella does it, next to Gugerotti among others.
We are not facing isolated cases, but a structure of complicity, a viscous fabric of silences, favors, crossed promotions and omertá.
And meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV...
Pope Leo XIV lives a few meters from there. If you really want to break with this network - and not only with generic statements - you must start by explaining why a convicted priest like Capella is still under the Vatican roof. The purification of the Church does not pass through synodal powerpoints of inclusion, but by expelling corruptors of minors and those who protect them from the Temple.
If you do not act clearly and firmly, the message is only one: the lavender mafia continues to rule. And he does it from the inside.