Police are searching for a phoney priest who conducted funeral services before making off from each with hundreds of euros left by mourners in the collection plate.
Father Marco, as he called himself, told genuine priests at a series of cemetery chapels in Sicily that he had been asked by the families of the deceased to carry out the service.
Dressed in a dog collar and full Catholic robes, the "priest" conducted the funerals helped by two "altar servers" who were his accomplices in the scam.
At the end of each ceremony the "servers" passed among the congregation with a collection plate, before making off with the cash.
The deception was uncovered after the real priest at the Rotoli cemetery, near Palermo, Father Giuseppe Calafiore, was asked by mourners why he had not taken the service himself.
The police said the trio had carried out the swindle at several cemeteries across Sicily, picking out their victims by carefully scanning newspaper death notices.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Phoney Priest
From the Telegraph:
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I'll pray for them today because there is a sense in which they are certainly enemies of God as per James 4:4
"Therefore, whoever wants to be a lover of the world makes himself an enemy of God."
We throw around the phrase "children of God" in modern times as though it includes scoundrels and terrorists and it does but only in its widest sense that He wills all to be saved....but as Aquinas noted: "the antecedent will of God does not always take place" (ST Vol.1/quest.19/6th art./reply to obj.1). And we don't mention James' phrase "enemy of God" at all....but that is the same imbalance that has our sermons void of the severe in general.
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