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PRIEST

Priest who runs racist website faces probe

A Reformist priest from a tiny Bernese village is under investigation by church leaders after it emerged that she helped run a fanatical anti-Islamic website.

The Council of Reformist Churches for Bern, Solothurn and Jura has criticised the priest, and declared her activities on website ‘Politically Incorrect’ to be “incompatible” with her position as a priest due to the “Islam-baiting” that takes place on it, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported.

The priest has been involved for a long time with the Politically Incorrect forum, a website frequented mainly by Germans, and has been operating clandestinely, the newspaper reported.

It has been alleged that the priest has been funding the website herself, the Tages Anzeiger reported. The prosecutor also believes it possible that she has been contributing some of the racist content, albeit under pseudonyms.

The Council had already warned the priest previously for her participation at extreme-right Islamophobic events in Germany. Having reviewed the content of the website, the Council described the articles posted there as “inflammatory and derogatory”.

The priest is now accused of breaching anti-racism laws and of failing to prevent criminal acts. Despite the accusations, she has still been permitted by her immediate superiors to continue to preach in the village.

An estimated 33 percent of the Swiss population are thought to be Reformist, although numbers much lower than this actually attend service regularly.

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CHURCH

Spain’s Supreme Court confirms jail for pedophile priest

Spain's Supreme Court has confirmed a jail sentence of more than 17 years for a priest who sexually abused two boys, one of whose parents consented.

Spain's Supreme Court confirms jail for pedophile priest
Photo: belchonock/Depositphotos

The news comes as a trickle of accusations of sexual abuse against priests in schools and seminaries over the past few years has started to erode the wall of silence surrounding abuse in Catholic Spain.   

In its verdict made public Wedneday, the Supreme Court confirmed a November 2017 sentence against Jose Donoso Fernandez, a former priest in the southwestern village of Mengabril, whom a provincial court sent to prison for 17 years and seven months.

It also confirmed a jail term of four years for the parents of one of the underage boys for committing sexual abuse “via omission, as they knew about and consented to the priest's sexual relations with their son.”   

The court said Donoso housed the Romanian couple and their children in 2013 and 2014 in the priest's parish house.   

“The family depended almost completely on the defendant Jose Donoso Fernandez, who took care of nearly all their expenses, food, clothes, the stay and schooling, and the bureaucratic paperwork they had to do,” the court said.   

The other victim was a 12-year-old altar boy.

READ ALSO: Spanish victims of Catholic priests speak out over sex abuse

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