Police to be asked to investigate
The Gozitan and the Canadian Curiae are looking into the identity theft case of Fr Joseph Grima, a Gozitan priest incardinated in Canada. The Gozo Curia also intends requesting the police to investigate the matter.
Over the past week, the imposter priest stole Fr Grima’s identity, created a profile on Facebook, and posed as a pro-divorce Maltese priest on a number of Facebook groups namely, Iva ghal-Ligi tad-divorzju f’Malta and Kattoliku? Iva, Divorzju? Naqbel.
The second group had been set up by the charlatan himself, and between Friday and yesterday morning it been removed from Facebook. His Facebook profile has also been removed and efforts yesterday to contact him on a telephone number on which he was contacted this week also proved futile.
The Malta Independent on Sunday did, however, get in touch with the real Fr Joseph Grima, in Canada, yesterday, who explained, “Last Thursday, just after I celebrated the 9.30am mass, a found a voice message from a Canadian friend asking me whether the priest who declared himself in favour of divorce on Facebook was really me.
“I assured him that it wasn’t me and that I do not even use Facebook or have a Facebook account. 20 minutes later I received another call from a different person asking me about the Facebook profile. I thought something was funny. It was then that the whole identity theft story came to my attention. Both the Gozitan and the Canadian Curia are investigating.”
“The issue annoyed me personally but I was even more annoyed about the fact that people, especially friends of mine, fell for this unknown person’s deceptive behaviour. Unfortunately, my reputation as a priest has been tarnished as he apparently posed as a pro-divorce priest.
“Facebook is a double edged sword: it can be a useful tool but it can also be used to do harm.
Facebook shouldn’t be used like this. I hope this saga ends quickly.”
Meanwhile, the Gozo Curia’s legal representative, Dr Carmelo Galea, in a letter being published in tomorrow’s edition of our sister daily newspaper, says, “The Bishop’s Curia of Gozo and Fr Joseph Grima have taken note of the fact that the information given on the Facebook profile referred to in the article published yesterday could be taken to refer to Fr Joseph Grima. Both the Curia and Fr Grima personally emphasised that the Facebook profile in question is evidently the work of a malicious hacker.”
“This unknown person would easily have accessed the Curia’s own website, found out information about Fr Grima’s and abused of it in order to formulate what is in essence a false identity purporting to portray the viewpoint of a person who does not exist but who has nothing to do with the Facebook profile and who disassociates himself completely and in the most absolute manner from the declarations to be found in that profile,” he added.
This falsity is further confirmed by the following contradictions between the information displayed on the Facebook profile and the real Fr Grima, Dr Galea indicated.
For starters, the real Fr Grima was ordained on 23 June 2000 and not ‘16 years ago’, as the fraudster claimed when contacted by telephone earlier this week. Additionally, the real priest works at the St Francis of Assisi Parish in Mississauga, and not simply ‘with the Maltese Canadian Community close to that Parish’, as the imposter had told our sister newspaper.
Fr Grima has not visited Malta at any time recently, and the allegation that he ‘happened to be in Malta when the campaigning for the introduction of divorce started to gain momentum’ is entirely false. He has no intentions or plans to return to Malta in the near future and has never expressed any opinion in favour of divorce and disassociates himself completely and absolutely from the activity that purports to be his on the Facebook profile in question.
The Gozo Curia pointed out that, together with the real Fr Grima, it is trying to find the originator of this elaborate hoax and once this is done, the Police will be asked to investigate the matter and take such criminal action against all those responsible according to the victims of the hoax in terms of law’.
The Archbishop’s Curia preferred not to add further comment and stick with the original statement.
This newspaper was also contacted by the real Fr Grima’s brother-in-law, Mario Cassar.
He explained that the priest’s family were worried about the case especially because it happened in the run-up to a referendum climate. The family too has been following the case for the past three days, since the Facebook profile was set-up. It is understood that in the past days the real Fr Grima has been collaborating with the Gozo Curia and in contact with his family to track down the impostor that stole his identity.