catholicsphere

The Priory of Sion was a club founded in 1956 by four young Frenchmen. It does not have “history dating back to the Crusades.”

In a 1996 statement made to the BBC by the Priory of Sion’s original president, André Bonhomme stated:

The Priory of Sion doesn’t exist anymore. We were never involved in any activities of a political nature. It was four friends who came together to have fun. We called ourselves the Priory of Sion because there was a mountain by the same name close-by. I haven’t seen Pierre Plantard in over twenty years and I don’t know what he’s up to but he always had a great imagination. I don’t know why people try to make such a big thing out of nothing.

The BBC itself concluded:

There’s no evidence for a Priory of Sion until the 1950s; to find it, you go to the little town of St. Julien. Under French law every new club or association must register itself with the authorities, and that’s why there’s a dossier here showing that a Priory of Sion filed the proper forms in 1956. According to a founding member, this eccentric association took its name not from Jerusalem but from a nearby mountain (Col du Mont Sion, alt. 786 m). The dossier also notes that the Priory’s self-styled grand master, Pierre Plantard, who is central to this story, has done time in jail.