About: http://data.cimple.eu/news-article/57c74fd5c6a5f21d4938d3542b802ba22e7ac5a8137bd078880f2b5d     Goto   Sponge   NotDistinct   Permalink

An Entity of Type : schema:NewsArticle, within Data Space : data.cimple.eu associated with source document(s)

AttributesValues
rdf:type
schema:articleBody
  • Pope Francis's former envoy to France, Luigi Ventura, goes on trial in Paris on Tuesday for sexual assault following complaints by five men who accused him of groping them during public ceremonies. The allegations against the 75-year-old Italian-born archbishop caused deep embarrassment for the Vatican, coming in the midst of a slew of revelations about clerical sex abuse that have rocked the Catholic Church. Ventura was stripped of his diplomatic immunity last year so that he could be put on trial -- a first in the history of the Holy See. He will not attend the start of the proceedings on Tuesday afternoon due to ill health, his lawyer told AFP. It was Paris city hall that first reported the cleric to the police after a 28-year-old official from the its international relations team accused Ventura of touching his buttocks three times during a New Year's ceremony in January 2019. Four other men later came forward with similar allegations against Ventura relating to public events in France between January 2018 and February 2019. They include a senior foreign ministry official and a seminarian who accused the bishop of groping him during a mass. Ventura, who had been stationed in Paris since 2009, resigned in December after reaching the 75-year age limit for the job He was the pope's envoy to Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chile and Canada before being appointed the Vatican's representative in France. His lawyer Solange Doumic had earlier told AFP that he was "waiting impatiently for the trial so that he can explain himself, that all light be shed (on the allegations) and his innocence be proven." But on Tuesday she said his doctor had advised him against travelling to France from Rome. Sexual assault carries a maximum five-year prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros in France. Doumic claimed that it was Ventura himself who had asked to have his diplomatic immunity removed "in order to be able to explain himself before the courts". But lawyers for his accusers, who have joined the criminal case as civil plaintiffs, said that they fought hard to have his immunity quashed. The Catholic Church has been rocked by a wave of allegations detailing decades of sexual abuse by clerics around the world, mostly involving minors. Pope Francis has announced a policy of zero tolerance towards offenders. alv/cb/jh/wdb
schema:headline
  • Vatican's former France envoy on trial for sexual assault
schema:mentions
schema:author
schema:datePublished
http://data.cimple...sPoliticalLeaning
http://data.cimple...logy#hasSentiment
http://data.cimple...readability_score
Faceted Search & Find service v1.16.115 as of Oct 09 2023


Alternative Linked Data Documents: ODE     Content Formats:   [cxml] [csv]     RDF   [text] [turtle] [ld+json] [rdf+json] [rdf+xml]     ODATA   [atom+xml] [odata+json]     Microdata   [microdata+json] [html]    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3238 as of Jul 16 2024, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-musl), Single-Server Edition (126 GB total memory, 5 GB memory in use)
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2025 OpenLink Software