ROME
International Business Times
By UMBERTO BACCHI: June 27, 2013
Italian investigators have opened an inquiry into claims by a convicted paedophile priest that an underage prostitution ring has been operating inside the Holy Roman Church with clergymen hiring rentboys for sex inside churches.
Don Patrizio Poggi, 46, told Italian authorities that a former Carabinieri pimped boys for nine clergymen.
Poggi, who served a five-year sentence for abusing teenage boys while he was a parish priest at the San Filippo Neri church in Rome, said he made the allegations to “protect the Holy Church and the Christian community.”
The boys were chosen because they were starving and desperate, he claimed, according to Il Messaggero newspaper.
The former policeman used to recruit the boys, mostly eastern European immigrants, outside a gay bar named Twink near Rome’s Termini train station. He reportedly sat in his Fiat Panda – marked “Emergency Blood” to avoid parking fines – to make his selection.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.