Catholic Church finally lets go of man who falsely claimed to be a priest for the last 18 years

CHURCH authorities in Spain have finally uncovered a false Roman Catholic priest who served in the village of Medina Sidonia for 18 years hearing confessions and celebrating weddings among other things.

Miguel Angel Ibarra, Colombian man who pretended to be a Roman Catholic priest, was exposed just before Christmas. A spokeswoman for the diocese of Cadiz and Ceuta, said that fo9llowing his discovery, marriages and baptisms carried out by Mr Ibarra remain valid but confessions are not even though the grace of God acted on the faithful who were deceived.

Mr Ibarra moved to Spain from Colombia in October 2017 and had been in charge of the church in the village of Medina Sidonia, which is home to some 11,000 people, in the southern region of Andalusia. He had pretended to be a priest for the past 18 years both in Colombia and in Spain.

Colombian church officials informed the diocese on December 13 that it had received a complaint that Mr Ibarra had forged his ordination documents and that after carrying out a thorough investigation, they had concluded that he had never been ordained. After the Spanish authorities got the complaint, he was ordered to go back to his archdiocese of origin in Colombia, known as Santa Fe de Antioquia.

Spain's diocese of Cadiz and Ceuta said it regretted that events like this could overshadow the work of parishioners and ordained priests, who serve the church every day in an exemplary way. Like in other increasingly secular European countries, Spain is finding it difficult to attract new recruits to the priesthood in recent years and has had to resort to importing priests, often from its former colonies in Latin America.