Vicar stole money paid to church for weddings and funerals, court told
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Version 0 of 1. A Church of England vicar stole thousands of pounds of cash handed over as fees for weddings, funerals and graveyard memorials, a court has heard. Simon Reynolds, 50, went on trial on Thursday accused of keeping fees handed over to him by bereaved families and engaged couples when he was priest-in-charge of All Saints Church in Darton, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He should have handed over the money – estimated to total £24,000 – to the diocese and the parochial church council, Sheffield crown court was told. Opening the case for the prosecution, Tom Storey told the jury how it was Reynolds’s responsibility to hand over the fees paid for weddings and funerals to the diocese. Storey said an investigation by the church and then the police showed he had only passed on a fraction of the money. The prosecutor said the offences, allegedly committed between 2007 and 2013, were a significant breach of trust. Reynolds, of Farnham, Surrey, is accused of four counts of theft. The first three relate to fees he should have sent to the Wakefield Diocesan Board of Finance, for marriages, funeral and churchyard monuments respectively. The fourth count relates to fees for monuments that should have gone to the parochial church council. The defendant denies all the charges. The trial continues. |