VATICAN CITY — A Vatican official has been acquitted by a Holy See tribunal of charges leveled by a former nun that he had solicited sex from her a decade ago while hearing her confession.

The tribunal that had investigated the accusations against the Rev. Hermann Geissler found him not guilty at a trial that ended this week, the Vatican said in a statement.

Father Geissler, an Austrian, was a section head in the Vatican doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He resigned in January after the accusations surfaced. He has denied them.

The accusations were made in November by Doris Wagner, a German who entered the convent when she was 19.