CRIMINAL CLERICS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 129, 30 May 1908, Page 15

CRIMINAL CLERICS.

I PBIEOTS SENTENCED FOB SHOCKING OFFENCES IS ITALY. Punishment as merited as it is severe has overtaken Don Giovanni Rtva. a licensed priest of the an-ii-diocese ofTnrin. who, at Milan Assizes, on ilonday. April 13, was sentenced to sixteen years' imprisonment for habitual corruption of the inmates of the €onsolata Convent Girls' Orphanage in Milan, of which institution he was father confessor. The trial, which lasted a long time, was heard with closed doors, but the facts have been supplied to the Press by the legal reporters. The jury found Eton Kiva guilty iv all cases, and denied that there were any extenuating circumstances. They acquitted another priest and the vice-direct-ress, but sent the mother superior, Sorora Maria FumagaUi, to prison for ten months ; for having striven to hush up the scandal iby concealing the confessor's crimes. ! FumagaUi's institute at Turin was under I the sanction of Cardinal Eichelmy, Arch- , bishop of Turin, to whom she had bequeatn!ed everything, but Cardinal Ferrari, Areh- { bishop of Milan, had declined to authorise ; the honse, partly because the nuns did not observe the rule of enclosure, and partly because of the dirty state of the building. Another parish priest, Don Vincenzo Lembo, has been sentenced at the Ascoli- | Piceno Assizes to a hundred months' strict confinement for having shot dead the husband of a pretty newly-married parishioner named Spagnoli, whom lie had enticed away to live with him at the presbytery. Spagyrti was got away for a time to the United States through the efforts, of his brother, also a priest, who feared vendetta, bat, overcome by nostalgia, he returned to Europe and tried in vain again to abduct the young woman. Don Lembo, after tilling bis rival one evening outside the entrance to the presbytery, ran upstairs, exchanged his soutane for a bunting costume, and fled away* through the crowd which had gathered around the corpse. In this case the jury allowed extenuating circumstances, as the priest said he committed the crime under the fear that his enemy would have attacked first. Yet another priestly murder trial opened at Bergamo on Monday,, when Don Dome; nico Milesi, parish priest of Batzizza, was charged with the premeditated assassination of Signor Loglio, town clerk of that place, from motives of implacable political hatred. Signor Loglxo was waylaid late at night by a couple of assassins, who, the Crown Prosecutor affirms, bad been armed by Don Otilesi. The body, which was beaten and stoned almost beyond recognition, was afterwards flung into a dyke. Other sensational trials of clerical prisoners are about to begin, including that of a priest at Avellino, near Naples, for killing his young mistress; a Canon and several associates, for colossal th«fts at Aosta Cathedral; and those 4 of the Camorist chaplain, Don Ciro Vittozzi, the Friar Valerian, and several members of the Theatine Order in Naples and the neighbourhood. It was the story of the charges against the Priest Eira that led to the fierce oatbreak of anti-clericalism in Italy last summer, and the flame has since been fanned by reports to the effect that the prison* of Italy are' toll of clerics; the" majority of whom are detained o* tKe grtveet crin*«oal charges lni<>#a » tie* #e*M cbde.