Fake "priest" discovered serving in Austria

[Schonborn_Site]

Fox News (foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179868,00.html) is running a story today on a German man who apparently faked being a priest in the diocese of Linz, Austria for about three months before being discovered.

In the Light of the Law (canonlaw.info/blog.html) has a good commentary on the canonical implications of someone impersonating a priest as well as a description of the possible sanctions in Canon Law for this type of ecclesiastical crime.

Linz (along with Eisenstadt and Sankt Polten) is a suffrage of the Archdiocese of Vienna. +++

cardinalschonborn.com/2005/12/fake-priest-discovered-in-linz.html

 

[Walt_Oliver]

Please provide a link to the Fox News story to comply with forum guidelines, not to your blog. Thread will be closed tomorrow if no link provided.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Walt

 

[Schonborn_Site]

oh, sorry about that, here’s the full post (btw, is there a way I can modify my original one instead of simply adding this?):

Fox News (foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179868,00.html) is running a story today on a German man who apparently faked being a priest in the diocese of Linz, Austria for about three months before being discovered.

In the Light of the Law (canonlaw.info/blog.html) has a good commentary on the canonical implications of someone impersonating a priest as well as a description of the possible sanctions in Canon Law for this type of ecclesiastical crime.

Linz (along with Eisenstadt and Sankt Polten) is a suffrage of the Archdiocese of Vienna. +++

 

[kieron]

How can one confirm someone is a priest? I assume there is an official registry…

 

[CatholicCid]

The Diocese would know or not. Our Diocese does have an entire list of all their Priests and Seminarians in some form, as we get a yearly Prayer list naming them all.
We also have ID cards for the Clergy from the Diocese and I imagine some sort of yearly letter from the Bishop in case they will be outside the Diocese to perform the Sacraments.