Fake priest infiltrates St. Peter’s
ROME, Italy (AP) — A fake priest was caught trying to hear confessions in St. Peter’s Basilica and was tried by a Vatican tribunal, a Vatican judge said in an interview published Saturday.
Judge Gianluigi Marrone, who is a member of the court system of the independent Vatican city-state, said the man was wearing clerical garb and carried documents alleging that he was a priest.
Checking with Italian authorities about the documents “unmasked him,” Marrone said, adding that the man had passed himself off as a priest in Italy.
“It was a case of usurping an ecclesiastical title, and thus he was tried by our tribunal,” the judge added.
Marrone didn’t say when the incident happened, what the tribunal’s verdict was or if the man received punishment.
Vatican judicial offices were closed Saturday afternoon, and no one answered the phone at the judge’s home in Rome.