Priest Visarion Alexa, definitively sentenced to prison with suspension after sexually assaulting a woman who came to confession

The priest Visarion Alexa, from the Church “Descent of the Holy Spirit” in Bucharest, was definitively sentenced on Thursday by the Bucharest Court of Appeal to two and a half years imprisonment, in the case in which he is accused of sexually assaulted a woman who came to confession, Agerpres reports.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal rejected on Thursday, both the appeal of the priest and the victim's appeal, being maintained the sentence applied by the lower court.

At the same time, the court forced Visarion Alexa to pay the victim 2,700 lei material damages and 35,000 lei moral damages.

The priest Alexa was accused of a parishioner of sexually assaulted her on April 23, 2022, in the summer altar of a church, when she had come to confess.

Immediately after the outbreak of the scandal, the priest was detained by the police for 24 hours, but a court decided to be released and placed under judicial control.

Visarion Alexa was one of the most popular priests in the Capital, with presence on radio and TV shows.

In September 2022, the Romanian Patriarchate announced that the priest acknowledged his facts before a commission of the Bucharest Archdiocese, being suspended from service and withdrawn from the position of parish.

“The Disciplinary Commission within the Archdiocese of Bucharest asked the priest Visarion Alexa a personal statement on the facts of which he was recently accused. He acknowledged the deed incriminated by the recorded probation and in the stenograms that became public, refusing to provide detailed details and invoking the fact that his lawyer is to be held in the state,” Patriarchate Vasile Bănescu.