The trial of Luigi Ventura will open on November 10, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Thursday.
Paris:
Former Pope Francis’ ambassador to France Luigi Ventura will stand trial on charges of sexual assault in Paris in November following complaints from four men, one of whom accused the clerk of inappropriate contact, lawyers said Thursday.
Ventura, an archbishop of Italian descent, was stripped of his diplomatic immunity by the Vatican last July after being questioned by French police, and resigned in December when he reached the age limit of 75 for his position.
His trial will open on November 10, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Thursday.
“He will be present,” Ventura’s lawyer Bertrand Ollivier told AFP. “He will attend the hearing to defend his honor and his innocence.”
For the alleged victims, the decision to bring Ventura to justice was a “victory,” said Jade Dousselin, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs.
The decision “validates what we have been saying from the start and strengthens the victims in their decision to assert their rights so that their impunity cannot continue,” she said.
An investigation was opened after the Paris municipality alerted prosecutors to a complaint by a young employee that he had been repeatedly groped by Ventura, who allegedly stroked his butt, during a diplomatic ceremony in January of Last year.
He was then joined by two other men with similar complaints from 2018, followed by a fourth.
A complaint was also filed in Ottawa by a man who made similar allegations about an incident in 2008 while Ventura was on duty in Canada.
A career diplomat, Ventura served in Brazil, Bolivia and Great Britain before being appointed nuncio, or envoy, to Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Niger, Chile and then Canada.
The Catholic Church has fought a wave of allegations detailing decades of sexual assault and abuse by clerics, mostly involving minors.
Complaints of alleged sexual assault by adult males are rare.
Pope Francis has vowed to face criminal offenses within the ranks of the Church.
A report released in June said at least 3,000 children had been sexually abused in the French Catholic Church since 1950.
In the most recent and high-profile case, defrocked Catholic priest Bernard Preynat was sentenced to five years in prison in March for sexually abusing Boy Scouts in his custody decades ago.
But in January, an appeals court overturned the conviction of Preynat’s superior, the former archbishop of Lyon Philippe Barbarin, for failing to report the abuses despite having known about it for years.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
