VITERBO, Italy – An Italian judge heard arguments Friday on whether a small-town parish priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed.
The priest’s atheist accuser, Luigi Cascioli, says the Roman Catholic Church has been deceiving people for 2,000 years with a fable that Christ existed, and that the Rev. Enrico Righi violated two Italian laws by reasserting the claim.
Lawyers for Righi and Cascioli, old schoolmates, made their arguments in a brief, closed-door hearing before Judge Gaetano Mautone in Viterbo, north of Rome.
The judge was expected to announce his decision – either dismiss the case or order Righi to stand trial – on Monday, said the prelate’s lawyer, Severo Bruno.
Cascioli filed a criminal complaint in 2002 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 had lived in Nazareth.
Cascioli claims that Righi’s assertion constituted two crimes under Italian law: so-called “abuse of popular belief,” in which someone fraudulently deceives people, and “impersonation,” in which someone gains by attributing a false name to a person.
“The point is not to establish whether Jesus existed or not, but if there is a question of possible fraud,” Cascioli’s attorney, Mauro Fonzo, said before the hearing.
Cascioli said the church has been gaining financially by impersonating as Jesus someone named John of Gamala, the son of Judas from Gamala.
He has said he has little hope of the case succeeding in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Italy, but that he is going through the necessary legal steps to reach the European Court of Human Rights, where he plans to accuse the church of “religious racism.”
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