The Italian gay priest rejected by the church and condemned for sodomy and heresy

Giuseppe Beccarelli was a religious man accused by sodomy and heresy in the eighteenth-century. The scandal of a man in the church is probably not the first one, but we hope not to hear stories like this anymore.

Giuseppe was born in Brescia in 1666. Near Brescia he attended a school for priests, where he received all the education and where he became the confessor for different Nobile young men. In this school only for men, Beccarelli, became famous as a religious and tutor of several guys, even the stories says that one of the students didn’t wanted to come back home during holidays because he wanted to stay near to the tutor.

During the years, he started to get some enemies, most of all with his school competitors, that accused him of suspected heresy. A few years later after an inquiry against him the school was closed by the Venetian government.

Beccarelli tried to reopen the school, during this effort he dedicated a comedy to the bishop of Brescia “The metamorphosis of modesty” and with the support of the noble Brescia he could reopened the college. Nonetheless such effort, the college was closed by the authority in Brescia and he was arrested.

The untold history says that during the interrogations and tortures he confessed different things against the church, even there are some evidences that he abused of some students.

When he was a spiritual counselor, he used to bring students to his dorm and make them do sex with him, most of them where silenced by himself, saying that that was a pure act and it wasn’t needed to confess it to the church.

These acts sometimes hidden by the church, were enough to make him pay by the damage and lives he touched in a wrong way.

Beccarelli was tortured and forced to apologize in a public square, then he was put in jail for life. He died in 1716.