Switzerland: school chaplain and cantonal religious-education head convicted over abuse on prayer trips
Request a correction or replyRecord class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
school chaplain, cantonal head of Catholic religious instruction, youth chaplain
Organization
Collegio Papio, Ascona
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
Three layers of religious authority converged on the same youths — school chaplaincy, cantonal control of their religious education, and youth pastoral care — and the offences occurred on spiritual excursions he alone organised and controlled.
- Pastoral or clerical authority
- Institutional obedience or isolation
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2025-08-14 · conviction and sentence (appeal status unconfirmed)
Lugano court, Ticino, Switzerland. A 56-year-old priest — chaplain of the Collegio Papio in Ascona, the most senior official for Catholic religious instruction in Canton Ticino, and a youth chaplain — was convicted of multiple counts of sexual coercion and sexual acts with minors against nine young people (four minors) between 2015 and 2023, committed largely during reflection and prayer trips he organised. He received a suspended 18-month term and a lifetime ban on activity involving minors.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- reflection and prayer trips he organised and led
- layered institutional and spiritual authority over the youths
Cited record
Sources
- national public broadcaster verdict and sentencing report 'Eineinhalbjährige bedingte Freiheitsstrafe für Priester im Tessin', SRF, 14 Aug. 2025.
Switzerland's public broadcaster reporting the conviction, the counts, and the prayer-trip setting.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/sexueller-missbrauch-eineinhalbjaehrige-bedingte-freiheitsstrafe-fuer-priester-im-tessin Corpus classification: national-public-broadcaster; evidentiary role: verdict-and-sentencing-report. SHA-256 a06e54bfc8a9cba57ffb5d5caa05e221195586ee38a24b6891815376ede375dd
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
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