“I’m sorry but if you swim in a piranha tank you can’t complain when you’re missing a limb when you get out,” Father Lorenzo Guidotti, a parish priest in Bologna told the victim.
“Should I feel pity? No!!. I keep that for those who are really VICTIMS of a shittily run city, not for those who live like barbarians with barbarians and then complain when they discover they haven’t been treated civilly. Those who CHOOSE the GETWRECKED culture should let others ‘enjoy’ themselves too”.
Father Guidotti said “waking up semi-naked I’d say is the least that could have happened to you.” He said “honey, I’m sorry but 1) you frequent Piazza Verdi which has become the “asshole of Bologna…2) you get disgracefully drunk…3) and then who do you go with, a North African?!!! Notoriously, real gentlemen”.
The archdiocese of Bologna has distanced themselves from the remarks of Father Guidotti and said his views did not reflect their beliefs. Father Guidotti’s views “are personal opinions which do not in any way reflect the thinking and the assessment of the Church, which condemns all kinds of violence,” the archdiocese said in a statement.
The diocese, led by Msgr Matteo Zuppi, also published a statement from Father Guidotti in which he apologised to the rape victim.
“I was wrong with my intervention, the terms, the ways, the corrections. I can only therefore apologise to her and her parents if my imprudent words may have added pain, which will happen in reading them,” said Father Guiditti. The priest said he acknowleged that he had “expressed himself in an inappropriate way and intended to clarify his thoughts”.
He appealed to parents and the authorities to combat what he called the “get high” culture that he said was putting young people in danger.
Father Guidotti said: “I ask everyone, who have perhaps a better capacity for language and possibilities (authorities, journalists, teachers, parents) to help dismantle this get-high culture our young people are living in. Otherwise tomorrow we will have to feel pity for another victim, and then another.
“Until when? Until we are able to say ‘enough!’ It is necessary to offer an alternative,” he said.
The priest also apologised for offending migrants, adding that he had nothing against them.