MADRID (AFP) – A Colombian man who pretended to be a Roman Catholic priest for 18 years hearing confessions and celebrating weddings, was exposed just before Christmas, the diocese in Spain where he was preaching said Monday (Dec 24).

Marriages and baptisms carried out by Miguel Angel Ibarra remain valid but confessions are not even though the “grace of God acted” on the faithful who were deceived, the spokesman for the diocese of Cadiz and Ceuta told AFP.

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.

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