Norway's top Catholic accused in fraud case

[muriel_volestrangler]

Norwegian police raided the premises of the Catholic Church Thursday on suspicion it had inflated membership figures for years to fraudulently claim six million euros in illegitimate state funding.
...
The fake members -- allegedly immigrant names taken out of the phone directory -- would have added 65,000 people to the church's scrolls and awarded it an additional 50 million kroner ($6.57 million, 5.84 million euros) from 2010 to 2014, according to Rusdal.

During that time, the country's Roman Catholic minority more than doubled in reported size, from fewer than 67,000 members in 2010 to 140,00 early last year, according to official figures.

"We never intended to do anything illegal," the Bishop of Oslo, Bernt Eidsvig, told the Dagbladet newspaper on Tuesday. "Our challenge was to record the Catholics who come to live in Norway... it is a huge task that was accomplished partly in a wrong way," he added.

http://www.thelocal.no/20150226/norways-top-catholic

Solution: end state funding for religions.

[edgineered]

1. Had to read it twice - couldn't believe my eyes! nt