SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- A judge in southern Chile has sentenced a Catholic priest to recite psalms daily during three months as punishment for a traffic violation.
Judge Manuel Perez said he issued the unusual sentence after Father Jose Cornejo said he could not afford the 50,000-peso ($100) fine that would have been the regular sanction for illegal parking in the city of Puerto Montt.
"He will have to recite seven psalms from a book in the Old Testament," Judge Perez told the Santiago daily La Tercera.
"This is not a sentence that just occurred to me," he added.
"I did it as a tribute to Galileo Galilei, one of the greatest scientists of all time, who received a similar sentence from the Catholic Church during three years for saying the Earth rotates around the sun."
The judge ordered a court official who lives near the priest to check daily that the sentence was being fulfilled.
The priest said he had parked his car in front of a school where he works because he lacked the money to pay for public parking
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/12/12/chile.sentence.ap/index.html
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