UNITED KINGDOM
The Star
Thursday 16 July 2015
A former South Yorkshire priest kept more than £24,000 that was paid for from weddings and funerals a court heard.
Simon Reynolds, aged 50, of Upper Church Lane, Farnham, Surrey, is accused of pocketing 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.
Reynolds is alleged to have stolen £9,754 meant for Darton All Saints Parochial Parish Council and £14,604 which should have gone to Wakefield Diocesan Board of Finance.
The accused appeared at Sheffield Crown Court yesterday to deny four counts of theft relating to his stint as priest from March 2007 to March 2013.
The jury was told that Reynolds had a responsibility to hand over fees worth £24,000 but didn’t.
The prosecutor explained how suspicions about Reynolds began after he left Darton, in March 2013, to take up a new post at a church in Surrey.
A church warden thought it was ‘irregular’ that a fees cheque from a stonemason relating to a church yard monument was made out personally to the former vicar.
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