COLOGNE, Germany (LifeSiteNews) – A Polish priest is due in a German court today to face a sentence of up to 120 days in prison for condemning homosexual predators in the Catholic Church.
Over 77,000 people have signed a petition in support of Father Dariusz Oko, and his publisher, 90-year-old German priest, Prof. Johannes Stöhr.
In August, a Cologne District Court ruled that Oko’s article, entitled “On the need to curb homosexual cliques in the Church,” constituted “incitement to hatred” against homosexual people. The court demanded that Oko pay a fine of 4,800 euros or serve 120 days in jail, according to Polish magazine Wprost. The court also charged Fr. Stöhr, the editor-in-chief of Theologisches, in which the piece was published.
Oko has called his upcoming day in court a “lavender trial.” Oko was first accused of hatred by Father Wolfgang Rothe, a pro-LGBT priest who organized the campaign against the Polish and German priests. Oko said that Rothe “is like a living illustration and postscript for my article and book ‘Lavender Mafia.’”
In an email obtained by LifeSiteNews, Oko provided highly incriminating photos of his accuser, including photos of Rothe kissing another male; Rothe blessing a lesbian couple inside a church; and a photo of Rothe at the “Deutsche Eiche” club in Munich, which Oko described as “a kind of gay brothel.”
The article by Oko which infuriated Rothe was published in the January/February edition of theological journal Theologisches, highlighting cases of abuse by homosexual priests and bishops and detailing mechanisms used by “homoclans” or a “homomafia” of predatory clerics to avoid accountability.
Oko described such groups as “a colony of parasites” that “cares first of all for itself, and not for the hosts at whose expense it lives,” and as a “homosexual plague” or a “cancer that is even ready to kill its host,” among other things. He stressed that “the existence of such powerful clans” attested to by both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI “is an obvious logical, ethical, and dogmatic contradiction to the very essence of the Church and her teaching.”
LifeSiteNews’s Raymond Wolfe reported on the July court proceedings:
Oko responded to the ruling against him in an interview with TVP Info, saying that he is “determined” to “save the seminarians from homocliques.”
“The Germans are putting me in jail? My grandfather and grandmother saved Jews, risked their lives, despite the fact that the Germans forbade saving Jews,” he said. “I am similarly determined, despite the fact that the Germans forbid me, to save the seminarians from homocliques.”
“This is a scientific article based on the enormous knowledge that comes to me from all over the world, from ordinary people, from the police, from the secret services. I collect known facts about homosexuals in cassocks and their habits,” he continued. “This ‘lavender mafia’ plays a similar role to the mafia in Sicily.”
“Is the criticism of the criminal activity of the Sicilian mafia an incitement to hatred against all Sicilians? So how can an academic reflection on the challenge of a criminal network connected with homosexual practices in the Church be an incitement to hatred against all homosexuals?”
The sentence against Oko has also caught the attention of Polish deputy minister of justice Marcin Romanowski, who slammed the ruling in a tweet yesterday. “According to the German court, Fr. Prof. Dariusz Oko, by exposing a group of rapists operating inside the church in a scientific article, incited hatred. The court thus trampled on academic freedom and showed that it values torturers more than victims,” he wrote. “Let us not allow such paranoia in Poland.”
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has spoken out in defense of Fr. Oko, saying he was ashamed that in his native Germany it is again possible “that a Polish scholar could be convicted for incitement to hatred for publishing a factual report.”
Müller drew a parallel between the lawsuit against Oko and the persecution of Polish intellectuals during the time of Poland’s occupation by Nazi Germany, saying that this case should “sound alarm bells amongst historically educated people.”
The cardinal also praised Oko for speaking out against homo-heresy in the Church and described the priest’s work as “a courageous act that deserves the respect of all decent people.”
He went on to echo the priest-professor’s words and condemned the criminal acts of “individuals who live in the Church but protect themselves behind the shield of impunity afforded by their office,” adding that these individuals “are leading numerous young men to their doom.”
The petition asking the German district court to revoke the lower court’s judgment can be found here.