JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

A group claiming descent from the Knights Templar is suing Benedict XVI for 100 billion euro. They claim that when Clement V dissolved the order in 1307, the church seized over 9,000 properties including real estate, mills, and businesses. The Templars were a secret society of warrior-monks founded after the First Crusade to protect pilgrims en route to Jerusalem. They became spectacularly wealthy, financed wars, and incurred the ire of powerful enemies who tried them on charges of heresy, devil worship and sodomy. Many Templars, including their Grand Master, were burned at the stake.

“The legal move by the Spanish group comes follows the unprecedented step by the Vatican towards the rehabilitation of the group when last October it released copies of parchments recording the trials of the Knights between 1307 and 1312. The papers lay hidden for more than three centuries having been “misfiled” within papal archives until they were discovered by an academic in 2001. The Chinon parchment revealed that, contrary to historic belief, Clement V had declared the Templars were not heretics but disbanded the order anyway to maintain peace with their accuser, King Philip IV of France.”

Experts have dismissed the lawsuit as cuckoo. If it prospers, does it mean we can sue the Catholic Church for seizing vast tracts of land in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period?