Fake Bishop in Vatican

Counterfeit cardinal nabbed trying to sneak into top-secret pre-conclave meeting at the Vatican

Ralph Napierski, a fake bishop, poses with cardinal Sergio Sebiastiana as the cardinal arrives for talks ahead of a conclave to elect a new Pope Monday.

It’s among the most exclusive of holy meetings. And yet a bogus bishop made it this-close to crashing a top-secret pre-conclave gathering of cardinals Monday who were at the Vatican to discuss church issues and plot the selection of a new pope.

Sporting a black fedora (while everyone else donned red skull caps) and a purple winter scarf instead of a sash, Ralph Napierski sneaked past Vatican security and almost made it into the top-secret, closed-door gathering of more than 140 cardinals at Paul VI Hall in the Vatican.

The German imposter — who arrived with a fake entourage and a protest message against child abuse in the church — milled around outside of the auditorium for about a half an hour and even managed to get his photo snapped with Italian Cardinal Sergio Sebastiani, president emeritus of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs. According to Italian media, he told onlookers his name was Basilius and that he was a bishop in the Italian Orthodox Church. That church doesn’t exist.

But at the doorway of Paul VI Hall, Swiss guards stopped Mr. Napierski as he tried to enter the meeting, the “Vatican’s official fashion police” apparently tipped off by his ill fitted cassock, that weird fedora and his excuse for a scarf.

On his personal website, Mr. Napierski says he’s from the Catholic order ‘Corpus Dei’ — a fake church that is a play on the real Catholic institution ‘Opus Dei’ and that his work is in “revealing the ancient hidden spiritual practices.”

The most recent post on his site, dated December 2012, advocates a form of meditation he calls “Jesus Yoga.”

On his ecclesiastical law blog, Mr. Napierski is described as a “slave and apostle like St. Paul.”

This isn’t the first time someone masqueraded as a religious leader and tried to bust into a private church function, according to USA Today. In 2012, a small group of fake bishops reportedly crashed the beatification mass for John Paul II.

“The church is very hierarchical, and so it can be quite awkward for security personnel to stop a senior cleric and ask to see his badge,” Robert Mickens, acorrespondent for U.K.-based Catholic newspaper The Tablet told USA Today.

The meeting Monday kick-started plans for the conclave that will end in the selection of Pope Benedict XVI’s successor.

“Of the 115 cardinals who can vote, 103 were on hand for Monday’s inaugural pre-conclave meeting, which over the coming days will discuss the problems of the church and give the cardinals a chance to get to know one another better,” the New York Post reported.

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