The archdiocese of Mérida-Badajoz has warned in a statement that two men have posed as priests to scam elderly people in Badajoz. According to the ecclesiastical entity, the "false priests" called the houses and "offer pastoral help" to elders to whom they invited to take communion or receive the sacrament of penance.
The vicar of the diocese, Francisco Maya, has detailed that the scammers, two men of whom he does not know more data, took advantage of the state of alarm and the confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic to pretend to be priests who asked, house by house, if its occupants wanted to receive communion or confess. If they agreed, they tried to cheat them. The vicar is unaware of the mechanics of scams.
"Some older people noticed and called the police, who alerted us," says the priest, adding that the problem has been solved and that they had never before been aware of a similar scam.
The Badajoz National Police headquarters is not aware of any complaint in this regard. The local police in the Extremaduran capital have not intervened either.
The archdiocese has reminded its faithful that its priests are available to serve those who request it "within their ministry", but that in order to render their services the faithful must specify the time and place previously.
The Mérida-Badajoz demarcation occupies a large part of the territory of the province of La Paz. It currently has 321 priests, of whom 237 work in the diocese, 17 are assigned to missions outside of Spain, another 27 reside outside the demarcation and 40 are retired.
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