INQUISITION NEWS: Rome priest 15 years for pedophilia

Rome priest sentenced to 15 years for pedophilia

Statement by Barbara Dorris Outreach Director SNAPdorris@gmail.com 314-862-7688

We’re grateful that this predator will be kept away from kids. We’re also grateful that the centuries-old deference given by secular authorities to religious figures is waning.

If children are to be protected, police and prosecutors must treat clerical criminals like other criminals.

It’s encouraging to see the Italian justice system doing what Italian Catholic officials should do but won’t do – ousting a child molesting cleric.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. SNAP was founded in 1988 and has have more than 10,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

Contact David Clohessy (314-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747, SNAPblaine@gmail.com), Peter Isely (414-429-7259, peterisely@yahoo.com), Barbara Dorris (314-862-7688 home, 314-503-0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com)

Rome priest sentenced to 15 years for pedophilia

Agence France-Presse March 3, 2011 10:02 AM

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates a mass at the Santo Volto di Ges church in the outskirts of Rome March 29, 2009. A court in Rome on Thursday sentenced a former Catholic priest to 15 years and four months in prison for abusing seven children between 1998 and 2008, ANSA news agency reported.

Photograph by: Alessandro Bianchi, Reuters

ROME – A court in Rome on Thursday sentenced a former Catholic priest to 15 years and four months in prison for abusing seven children between 1998 and 2008, ANSA news agency reported.

The ex-priest, Ruggero Conti, had claimed innocence and his lawyers had asked for Conti to be released due to a lack of evidence.

Prosecutors had sought 18 years in prison on charges of sex acts against minors, sexual violence and incitement to prostitution of a minor.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Conti’s parish in the outskirts of Rome was part of the diocese of Porto and Santa Rufina, not the Rome diocese headed up by Pope Benedict XVI.