French Exorcist Priest Raped and Tortured Teachers at Excommunicated Catholic Order
· International Business Times
· By Umberto Bacchi 
April 11, 2014
French police have arrested a fundamentalist priest who allegedly raped and tortured three women during exorcism rituals.
The
40-year-old allegedly abused the women in 2010, when he was head of the
private religious school Notre-Dame-de-la Sablonniere in Goussonville, a
village of 600 people 50km west of Paris.
His victims were teachers at the institute run by the Society of St. Pius X, a Catholic order blackballed by the Vatican.
The
priest, who has not been named, used the spiritual influence he had on
the women to abuse them, Le Parisien newspaper reported.
One of the victims, a mother, had reportedly came to him for advice on a previous sexual abuse she had suffered.
The priest performed a so-called exorcism on her repeating the abuse to "purge evil with evil", the newspaper said.
The woman was said to have been so traumatised that she could not describe the events to police.
The
priest used the same perverse technique to manipulate two other women
into believing they had been the victims of sexual abuses and thus
needed to be exorcised.
Questioned
by police, the man downplayed the accusations claiming that the women
agreed to the exorcism and that sexual acts were only simulated.
The alleged crimes came to light as two of the victims found the strength to lodge a complaint with police in 2013.
Prosecutors in Versailles charged the clergyman with acts of cruelty, torture and rape.
Le
Parisien reported that the man had already been tried by his religious
order in a canon trial and sentenced to two years in a monastery.
Founded
by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970, the Society of St. Pius X
has no canonical status, meaning ministries exorcised by its ministers
are not considered legitimate by the Vatican.
The
order, which opposes reforms of the church made at the Second Vatican
Council, fell out with the Holy See when it ordained four bishops
without the Pope's consent in 1988.
The
four were excommunicated immediately but eventually pardoned in 2009.
Among them was Richard Williamson, who denies the Holocaust and the
existence of Nazi death camps and gas chambers.
The Society sparked controversy last 2013 when it agreed to celebrate funerals for Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke who died unrepentant aged 100 in Rome.
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