The Vatican has confirmed that sanctions were imposed on Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo in 2019, after he was charged with multiple instances of sexual abuse.

Bishop Belo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his work on behalf of human rights in East Timor, resigned from his post in the Dili diocese in 2002, at the age of 54, citing health reasons. He has since lived in Portugal.

The Vatican evidently imposed disciplinary sanctions on Bishop Belo—without any public announcement—sometime after the eruption of a worldwide scandal over revelations that leading Church officials had failed to take action on abuse complaints against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.