He had worn the miter only for show. The same goes for the rest of the cassock. In short, bishop but only on the phone. And he had been so good with words despite his age – and therefore certainly not the voice of an elderly monsignor given that he was born in 2001 – that he initially succeeded in his aim despite the scam having been aimed at someone in the sector. Everything vanished the following day when the priest who was targeted – the then parish priest of Sant’Agostino di Faenza – had blocked the check. In short, no money.
The only thing that our – a 23-year-old resident of Andria, repeat offender and defended by the lawyer Giangregorio De Pascalis replaced by his colleague Eleonora Sgrò – managed to collect, was a sentence: 9 months of imprisonment and a 900 euro fine imposed yesterday morning by judge Cecilia Calandra (the reasons for the sentence will be filed within 30 days).
To understand why, we need to go back to 18 June 2021, the day on which the then parish priest of Sant’Agostino – born in 1935, born in Bagnacavallo but resident in Faenza – received that strange call from the young Apulian. On the receiver – according to the checks coordinated by prosecutor Daniele Barberini – the accused had pretended to be the bishop emeritus of Bari, a certain Cacucci. And in fact Francesco Cacucci, from Bari born in 1943 and obviously totally unrelated to this affair, has been archbishop emeritus of Bari-Bitonto since 29 October 2020. Strengthened by that usurped credential, the self-styled bishop of Puglia had managed to convince the Don from Romagna to sign a check made out to him. Not a little treasure but not even two pennies: exactly 4,000 euros.
Money which, however, the ultra-octogenarian priest had managed to stop at the last minute the following day before the amount was collected. Check ultimately blocked and best regards to the cross-diocese scam. What discouraged the priest, to whom the 23-year-old had given neither his real name nor his telephone number on the phone, was perhaps a tattoo that the young man had on his right hand: a lion with a mane, not exactly a distinctive sign of a bishop…
And so the young ‘monsignor’ was accused of the attempted fraud aggravated by various circumstances: for having tried to take advantage of the age of the targeted priest (he was 86 years old at the time); and for having committed the crime against a Catholic minister. For his part, the parish priest Manfredo had fortunately not had any economic repercussions from this misadventure: for this reason he probably did not appear as a civil party in the trial.
In any case, it is important in these cases to contact the police immediately. Fraud targeting the elderly is in fact a national emergency. Fraudsters are often very skilled: consummate actors both in the way they present themselves and in the plots they manage to hatch in order to get to the wallets of the unfortunate ones.
Andrea Colombari
