Luigi Cascioli

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Luigi Cascioli is an Italian atheist author. When Cascioli was younger he trained to become a Roman Catholic priest, but he left his training to become a pronounced atheist. He asserted that Jesus never existed, but was a fictionalisation of a historical "anti-Roman Jewish insurgent" called John of Gamala.^[1] Cascioli's arguments for this hypothesis were presented in his book The Fable of Christ.

In response to this book, in 2002, a local priest, Father Enrico Righi, published a critique of Cascioli in a church newsletter^{[citation needed]}. On September 13, 2002, Cascioli filed a lawsuit against the Catholic Church, and Father Righi in particular, for libel against him, and for promoting fraud by observing that the existence of Christ is historically factual.

Originally, the Italian judge threw out the case, but the Court of Appeal asserted that there was a genuine case to answer. On January 27, 2006, an Italian judge began taking initial hearings to decide whether the case should be allowed to come to court. On February 9, 2006, the judge again threw out the case and recommended an investigation of Cascioli for slander against Father Righi.

On March 20th, 2006, the case was re-evaluated,^[2] and in July of that year Cascioli was fined by an Italian appeals court for bringing a fraudulent suit,^[3] a prospect that Cascioli dismissed, saying proving the charge would still require Righi to prove Christ's existence.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had agreed to consider hearing the merits of the case, but the case was closed because the period for presenting the necessary documentation expired.