A French bishop is accused of attempted rape in latest scandal to hit Catholic Church in France

A French bishop has been given a preliminary charge of attempting to rape an adult man a decade ago, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday. It is the latest of a growing number of accusations of sexual abuse by clergy in France.

The Bishops' Conference of France said the accused bishop, Georges Colomb, contests the charge and deserves the presumption of innocence. He has asked the Vatican to step aside from his duties as bishop of La Rochelle and Saintes in western France to prepare his defense.

French investigative website Mediapart reported that senior figures in the Catholic Church were aware of the accusations for years.

The allegations didn't reach prosecutors until May of this year. That's when lawyers for the Archdiocese of Paris and a Catholic group called the Foreign Missions of Paris, shortened to MEP in French, submitted a report of a rape attempt by Colomb in 2013, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Colomb headed the MEP from 2010 to 2016, and his accuser was staying in MEP facilities at the time of the incident, according to French media reports. Colomb became a bishop in 2016.

As a result of the ensuing investigation, Colomb was detained for questioning last week and magistrates filed a preliminary charge on Friday, the prosecutor’s office said. Colomb is under judicial supervision and barred from contact with the victim or witnesses pending further investigation.

His accuser has not been publicly named. After the alleged rape attempt, the man spoke about what happened to another official in the MEP, Gilles Reithinger.

Reithinger told public broadcaster France-3 that the man said Colomb proposed an oil massage that made him uncomfortable but didn’t mention any sexual wrongdoing. Reithinger, now bishop of Strasbourg, said he raised the issue with Colomb’s superior at the time but didn’t see any reason to report the incident to prosecutors.

The bishops' conference said in a statement Monday that it expresses its concern for the alleged victim, and offered support for ‘’all those who are troubled or hurt by this news.’’

A lawyer for Colomb did not respond to request for comment.

France is coming to terms with decades of covered-up abuse by church-related figures amid a global reckoning over the issue.

France’s bishops’ conference agreed to provide reparations after a 2021 report estimated some 330,000 children were sexually abused over 70 years by priests or other church-related figures in the country. The estimates were based on broader research by France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research into sexual abuse of children. 

Reference: The Independent:

Dalai Lama apologises for asking child to suck his tongue

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama ‘regrets’ the incident - SANJAY KUMAR

The Dalai Lama has apologised for asking a young boy to suck his tongue and kissing him on the lips in a widely-shared video clip. 

The Tibetan spiritual leader, 87, “regrets” the incident, a statement from his office said on Monday. 

“His Holiness wishes to apologise to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt his words may have caused,” it said. 

“His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras,” the statement read after a backlash from social media users. 

The video shows the Dalai Lama holding the boy, who has not been identified, under the chin and pulling him in for a kiss on the lips. 

The boy moves his head away but after a few more seconds of talking the Dalai Lama pokes out his tongue and asks, “can you suck my tongue”. 

Some people in the audience laugh and the child puts his tongue out slightly as he again moves his head towards the spiritual leader. 

The Dalai Lama then hugs the child and talks more with him, telling him to look up to “good human beings who create peace and happiness”.

The incident took place on Feb 28 during a speech the Buddhist monk was giving to recent Indian graduates in the city of Dharamsala, where he lives in permanent exile.

The Delhi-based Haq: Centre for Child Rights told CNN it condemns “all forms of child abuse”.

“Some news refers to Tibetan culture about showing tongue, but this video is certainly not about any cultural expression and even if it is, such cultural expressions are not acceptable,” it said.

‘What did I just see?’

Twitter users slammed the video, calling it “disgusting” and “absolutely sick” after it started trending on Sunday.

“Utterly shocked to see this display by the #DalaiLama. In the past too, he’s had to apologise for his sexist comments. But saying - Now suck my tongue to a small boy is disgusting,” wrote user Sangita.

Another poster, Rakhi Tripathi, said: “What did I just see? What that child must be feeling? Disgusting.”

The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the world’s most well-known Buddhist figure, and has long led the movement for Tibetan autonomy.

He has lived in exile since a Tibetan uprising was crushed by Chinese forces in 1959. 

He won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize “for advocating peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people.”

Despite that, the Chinese government has accused the Dalai Lama of being a “violent separatist”, though he has never espoused violence as a means of achieving Tibetan independence. 

Beijing also routinely criticises and pressures world leaders and celebrities who meet with the Dalai Lama, or even if they send simple messages such as birthday greetings, in an effort to stub out his influence.

With increasing age, the spiritual leader has reduced the number of speaking appearances and interviews he gives. 

The 87-year-old has previously attracted controversy for saying if his successor as Dalai Lama was a woman, she would “have to be attractive”.

In 2018, he said Europe should be kept for Europeans when discussing rising numbers of migrants entering the continent. 

“The whole Europe (will) eventually become Muslim country? Impossible. Or African country? Also impossible,” he said.  

Reference: The Telegraph: Sophia Yan

Vatican on trial in UK for first time in history as British banker looks to clear his name

A British financier at the centre of the Vatican’s “trial of the century”

has launched a legal bid to clearhis name.

Lawyers for Raffaele Mincione have claimed that the Vatican’s chief prosecutor may have perverted the course of justice because of the misleading allegations levelled

against him in British courts.

The allegations form a central part of the Vatican’s “trial of the century” and relate to a property deal where the Vatican invested £124m in a former Harrods warehouse in

Chelsea that was earmarked for development into luxury apartments.

The Vatican claims Mr Mincione defrauded it by inflating the price when his companies sold the property in 2018. Prosecutors have charged Mr Mincione and ten others with offences

including fraud, embezzlement and abuse of office. All ten, which include Angelo Becci, the former right-hand man to Pope Francis, deny wrongdoing.

However, Mr Mincione maintains he did not do anything wrong and that the property valuation

by independent experts was appropriate. He claims that the Vatican has never disclosed

evidence to show it lost money nor of his alleged wrongdoing.

As a result, Mr Mincione has brought a civil action in the UK courts as a “counterblast”

to the publicity and to protect his reputation after suffering “prejudice” as a result of the allegations.

Now the Court of Appeal has ruled that the Vatican should face trial in the English courts for

the first time in its history over the allegations that it has levelled against Mr Mincione.

In the latest move, Mr Mincione’s lawyers have written to the Vatican’s chief prosecutor Alessandro Diddi, accusing him of “factual misstatements and omissions” in the UK proceedings.

In the letter, Nick Vamos, the former head of special crime and head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said these statements may mean Mr Diddi may have 

“committed the offence of perverting the course of justice”.

Partygate lawyer

Mr Vamos, who appeared as part of the legal team supporting Boris Johnson at his recent committee appearance over the partygate affair, asked Mr Diddi, a former mafia defence lawyer,

for a meeting in order to “understand your position as to what occurred, and why”. 

Mr Vamos copied his letter to various agencies including the CPS, the Home Office and the National Crime Agency.

In the letter, he challenged claims that the funds for investment came from St Peter’s Pence,

charitable Catholic donations intended for the needy, rather than Credit Suisse.

“You claimed that the funds for the investment by the Vatican came from Peter’s Pence, when in fact you knew that they were provided by Credit Suisse…

and you therefore wrongly characterised the deal as a misuse of charitable funds,”

wrote Mr Vamos.

“You claimed that the Vatican… was the subscriber, when in fact the subscriber was Credit Suisse… and you therefore wrongly characterised the investment.”

“This raises a number of potential issues as a matter of English law… the factual misstatements and omissions in your evidence raises the question of whether you committed the offence of

perverting the course of justice contrary to English common law.”

The Vatican has been contacted for comment.

Previously, a Vatican spokesman has commented: “The legitimacy of the investigations and the correspondence of the Vatican judiciary system to the principles of fair trial has been recognised by various foreign courts.” 

Reference: The Telegraph: Charles Hymas

The Importance of Demons

The ancient Mediterranean world taught that priestesses, witches, diviners and poets possessed the ability to open portals through which sentient powers or " demons" who inhabited extra-worldy planes could travel to the material universe.

These beings, these powers-that-be, did not have a physical form; they were not composed of "atoms,"the indivisible elements of our world, and they did not have eyes, ears, mouths, voices, or, in fact, any human or biological attributes at all.

And perhaps most importantly, these immortals were neither male or female; they were neither and yet they were both.

In the Greco-Roman way of thinking, gods are the cosmic bloom of existence. Greek and Latin culture, preserved in the amber of ancient literature, perpetuated the view that Gods are the immortal "elements" of an ordered and living universe.

For example, Aphrodite is the desire of sexual attraction; Dionysus is ecstasy; Athena is civic justice. Unlike humans, the gods aren't born, they don't age, and they don't die. They are in perpetual bloom.

Myth was the medium in which the classical world expressed the efflorescene of the immortal forces of the universe.

Greek and Roman myth had an extraordinary influence on ancient artists, statesmen, religious leaders and philosophers.

It was a cultural cement that facilitated the construction of democracy, the establishment of education, and the creation of the scientific method.

Ancient myth was a metaphor for expressing the individuality and actions of the immortal powers that govern the universe.

Reference: Hermaphrodites Gynomorphs and Jesus: Author: Dr.David C.A Hillman