Luigi Ventura’s trial will open on November 10, the Paris prosecutor’s workplace mentioned Thursday.
Paris:
Pope Francis’s former ambassador to France, Luigi Ventura, will stand trial for intercourse assault in Paris in November following complaints by 4 males, one among whom accused the cleric of inappropriate touching, attorneys mentioned Thursday.
Ventura, an Italian-born archbishop, was stripped of his diplomatic immunity by the Vatican final July after he was questioned by French police, and resigned in December when he reached the 75-year age restrict for his publish.
His trial will open on November 10, the Paris prosecutor’s workplace mentioned Thursday.
“He might be current,” Ventura’s lawyer Bertrand Ollivier advised AFP. “He’ll attend the listening to to defend his honour and innocence.”
For the alleged victims, the choice to place Ventura on trial was a “victory,” mentioned Jade Dousselin, a lawyer for one of many plaintiffs.
The choice “validates what now we have been saying all alongside and reinforces the victims of their determination to press their claims in order that his impunity wouldn’t be allowed to proceed,” she mentioned.
An investigation was opened after the Paris municipality alerted prosecutors to a criticism by a younger worker that he was repeatedly groped by Ventura, who allegedly caressed his buttocks, at a diplomatic ceremony in January final 12 months.
He was later joined by two different males with related complaints relationship from 2018, after which by a fourth.
A criticism was additionally filed in Ottawa by a person who made related allegations about an incident in 2008, whereas Ventura was serving in Canada.
A profession diplomat, Ventura served in Brazil, Bolivia and Britain earlier than being appointed nuncio, or envoy, to Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Niger, Chile after which Canada.
The Catholic Church has been battling a wave of allegations detailing many years of sexual assault and abuse by clerics, largely involving minors.
Alleged intercourse assault complaints by grownup males are uncommon.
Pope Francis has vowed to confront legal offences within the Church’s ranks.
A report in June mentioned a minimum of three,000 kids had fallen sufferer to intercourse abuse within the French Catholic Church since 1950.
In the newest high-profile case, defrocked Catholic priest Bernard Preynat was given a five-year jail time period in March for sexually abusing boy scouts in his care a number of many years in the past.
However in January, an appeals courtroom overturned the conviction of Preynat’s superior, Lyon’s former archbishop Philippe Barbarin, for not reporting the abuse regardless of figuring out about it for years.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
Source link
