Monday, October 03, 2011

Hungarian Cardinal Issues "Fake Priest" Warning

While still dealing with the fallout of the the very dirty (and very Hungarian) dirty priest scandal, Hungary's Catholic Church is now being faced with another outrage related to our local Men in Black. 

According to an open letter recently published by Cardinal Péter Erdő, individuals posing as priests have been found to be conning mourning families by offering to attend funerals in the name of the church. 

Endre Galambossy, the vicar of Rákoscsaba (District XVII) confirmed that the "fake priests" most often appear near the new public cemetery in the district, promising a religious funeral for a relatively low price.

(The Church generally charges Ft 10,000 for funeral services, but waives the fee if the family is hard up for cash.) 

In his communiqué, Hungary's top Catholic named funeral services firm AEVUM - which, by the way, has a multi-lingual website offering services including "dead body transportation within the whole European region including all-pervasive administration " - as the employer of the fraudsters. 

For its part, the company denied the allegations, and said it may take "legal steps." 

No word on any further steps the Church may be planning on taking against the company, though we'd say a good starting point would be demanding about a trillion million Hail Marys.