Vatican Says It's Assisting Dominicans in Abuse Case VATICAN CITY - The Vatican said Thursday that it was cooperating with prosecutors in the Dominican Republic who are investigating its ambassador over the suspected sexual abuse of teenage boys, a contentious case that has raised legal questions about the Holy See's responsibilities when priests are accused of wrongdoing. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, denied that the Vatican had been trying to shield the ambassador, Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, by recalling him to Rome before Dominican prosecutors announced their investigation. The Holy See recalled the ambassador on Aug. 21 and relieved him of his job as apostolic nuncio. It acted after the archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús Lopéz, told Pope Francis about the allegations in July. Dominican prosecutors made their investigation public last week, largely in response to local news media reports about accusations of sexual misconduct by Archbishop Wesolowski, 65, and a fellow Polish priest who is now also outside the country. The Dominican prosecutor, Bolívar Sánchez, has said he interviewed seven boys between the age of 13 and 18 as part of the investigation. He said three of them work on the streets of the capital, Santo Domingo, while the other four live elsewhere. The local news media have reported that some of the teenagers shine shoes. Mr. Sánchez has described some of their accusations as coherent. Archbishop Wesolowski is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be investigated over claims of sexual abuse, and his case has raised questions about whether the Vatican, by removing him from Dominican jurisdiction, effectively placed its own church investigation ahead of the Dominican inquiry. Father Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement, "The recall of the ambassador is by no means an effort to avoid taking responsibility for what might possibly be verified." He said the Vatican had told the Dominican ambassador to the Holy See early this month that it would cooperate with the Dominican authorities with whatever they might need. The Vatican's own rules for conducting sexual abuse investigations under church law call for cooperation with the civil authorities and reporting abuse allegations to the police where laws require it. Those norms were shaped after an explosion of sexual abuse cases in 2010, when thousands of people came forward in Europe, South America and elsewhere detailing abuse by priests whom church officials had not reported to the police. Attorney General Francisco Domínguez Brito has said that if the government finds any concrete evidence, it will seek to extradite Archbishop Wesolowski. The Dominican Republic has no extradition agreement with the Vatican.