Judge Dismisses Case Disputing Jesus' Existence

I have been following this one for some time. An atheist challenged the existence of Christ in the Italian Courts. He actually sued his childhood friend went in the direction of becoming a Priest. It is good to see something positive come about in liberal Europe relating to Christianity. I am hoping the absurdity of the Mohammedan Cartoon Crisis swayed this judge to throw out the case. It makes a statement for Christ even the judge made some legal mumbo jumbo to justify his ruling. One of the keen reasons to follow this is because of the Supreme Court beginning to use International law rulings as precedent in American rulings.
Hat tip Slantright.com.
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Friday, Feb. 10, 2006 Posted: 6:14:15PM EST
By Jason Davis
The Christian Post

A judge in Italy rejected a suit brought forward by an atheist who had accused a Catholic priest of deceiving the public by saying that Jesus Christ existed.

Judge Gaetano Mautone, who issued the ruling in Viterbo, a town just north of Rome, also said in his decision that the plaintiff, 72-year-old Luigi Cascioli, should be investigated for possible slander, according to the Associated Press. Cascioli had claimed that by teaching about Jesus’ existence, the Rev. Fr. Enrico Righi, 76, had violated Roman laws prohibiting “abuse of popular belief” and “impersonation.”

Righi, who was a childhood schoolmate of Cascioli in a seminary, was “very satisfied and moved” by the outcome, according to Bruno Severo, Righi’s attorney.

“He is an old, small-town parish pries[t] (sic) who never would have thought he’d be in the spotlight for something like this,” Severo said, according to AP.

Righi, meanwhile, thanked God that the ordeal was over.“I’m glad it has ended like this because imagine if it had gone on,” the priest told Reuters.

Cascioli sued Righi after the priest wrote in a parish bulletin that Jesus existed, that he was born to a couple named Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, and that he lived in Nazareth. Righi had asserted that there was plenty of historical evidence to prove Jesus’ existence.The abuse charge, according to Cascioli, was directed at the priest and by extension the Catholic Church for spreading falsehoods for 2000 years. The impersonation charge had to do with Cascioli’s belief that accounts of Jesus were based upon a Jewish revolutionary named John of Gamala.

Cascioli claimed in his complaint to the court that he didn’t want to inhibit the freedom of Christians to worship, but rather to “denounce the abuse that the Catholic Church commits by availing itself of its prestige in order to inculcate – as if being real and historical – facts that are really just inventions.”

When told by the judge that prosecutors should investigate Cascioli for possible slander, the atheist said that if he was tried for slander, prosecutors would have to prove that Jesus existed, according to Reuters.

“They don’t have any proof,” said Cascioli, who had previously stated that he did not expect his case to succeed in the mostly Roman Catholic nation of Italy.

“This is not surprising but it doesn’t mean it all ends here,” he said.

According AP, Cascioli is considering taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights.“This is an important case and it deserves to go ahead,” he said.
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