Jealous husband is charged with attempted murder for shooting a married Orthodox priest ‘who was sleeping with his wife’

A jealous husband has been charged with attempted murder for shooting a ‘sexually adventurous’ Greek Orthodox priest last month in Lyon, France.

The Georgian national, 40, identified as Georgi P, was arrested last Friday and charged on Sunday for attacking married priest Nikolaos Kakavelakis, 52, for sleeping with his Russian wife, prosecutors said.

The wife was released without charges at the weekend after the attack outside the church which saw the priest shot twice in the chest with a sawn-off shotgun, according to Lyon prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet.

The shooting had initially raised fears of a fresh act of terror in France following series of deadly attacks in the last weeks by radical Islamists. But investigation has revealed the motives of the attacker after the priest who survived the attack woke from his coma and told detectives that the man who attempted to murder him was a love rival.

Father Kakavelakis, who is married with two children and has been a priest at the Church of Annunciation for 12 years, is ‘very into sex, and he is very adventurous with the ladies,’ an investigator told Le Parisien.  

The man admitted the shooting and told police that he had wanted revenge after discovering the priest was sleeping with his wife. However he claimed that he had only wanted to injure his rival, not kill him, the prosecutor said.