Author: AP
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 23, 2006
Lawyers for a small-town parish priest have
been ordered to appear in court next week after the Roman Catholic cleric
was accused of unlawfully asserting what many people take for granted: that
Jesus Christ existed.
The Rev. Enrico Righi was named in a 2002
complaint filed by Luigi
Cascioli after Righi wrote in a parish bulletin
that Jesus did indeed exist, and that he was born of a couple named Mary and
Joseph in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth.
Cascioli, a lifelong atheist, claims that
Righi violated two Italian laws by making the assertion: so-called "abuse
of popular belief" in which someone fraudulently deceives people; and
"impersonation" in which someone gains by attributing a false name
to someone. Cascioli says that for 2,000 years the Roman Catholic Church has
been deceiving people by furthering the fable that Christ existed, and says
the church has been gaining financially by "impersonating" as Christ
someone by the name of John of Gamala, the son of Judas from Gamala.
He also asserts that the Gospels - the most
frequently cited testimony of Jesus' existence - are inconsistent, full of
errors and biased, and that other written evidence from the time is scant
and doesn't hold up to scholarly analysis.
Prosecutors, who in Italy are obliged to investigate
such complaints, initially tried to have the case dismissed, saying no crime
could be verified.
But Cascioli challenged them, and Judge Gaetano
Mautone set a hearing for next Friday in Viterbo, north of Rome, to discuss
preliminary motions in Cascioli's bid to have the court appoint technical
experts to review the historical data and determine if Jesus really did exist.
Cascioli, 72, said in a recent interview that
he decided to pursue the case against Righi, a priest in the village of Bagnoregio,
near Viterbo, because the cleric had written in the parish bulletin that Jesus
existed.
Asked why he went after Righi - a schoolmate
when he and Cascioli were boys - and not any number of bishops, cardinals
or even the Pope who have asserted the very same thing, Cascioli said it didn't
really matter who he named in his complaint.
"When one demonstrates that Christ didn't
exist, attacking a simple priest is the same thing as attacking a bishop or
cardinal," Cascioli said.
Cascioli is quick to stress that he has no
problem with Christians freely professing their faith. Rather, he says in
his complaint, he wants to "denounce the abuse that the Catholic Church
commits by availing itself of its prestige in order to inculcate - as if being
real and historical - facts that are really just inventions." Righi,
who has been a priest for 50 years, declined to be interviewed before the
hearing.
