ROGUE IN PULPIT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19864, 11 June 1927, Page 14 (Supplement)

ROGUE IN PULPIT

A BOGUS ARCHBISHOP PARIS, May 8. Ono of Europe’s biggest rogues, a Pole named Tarlowski, was sent to goal at Caen yesterday for three years. Tarlowski, who appeared on a charge, of posing as a bishop, astonished the judges by delivering a long address to them in fluent Latin. “Not a bishop, but a notorious international swindler,” was the police description of him. Expelled during the war from a Hungarian Jesuit house, ho wandered through Europe and the Near East, imposing on pious, simple people. Love affairs which he had in Vienna and Warsaw led to his hasty flight from those towns to Cracow, where he entered a monastery. A theft committed in the monastery led to his expulsion and flight to Radoff, in Russia. Here, posing as an ordained priest, his habit of saying Mass at uncanonical hours led to his arrest as a lunatic, and his detention in a madhouse. The revolution in Russia incidentally procured his release, and he hastily left for Italy. In Florence, suspected of spying, he was once more sent to goal. After leaving Italy, he next appear cd in the North of Spain, where he posed as the exiled Catholic Bishop of Odessa. Pious Spaniards listened to his eloquent sermons, delivered from cathedral pulpits, and furnishfd sums for destitute Russian Catholics, which he said he represented. Caen wns the next fieW of his roguery. Here he posed as an archbishop, arid showing stolen letters of recommendation. he was able to borrow largo sums from the faithful. Then he moved on to Lisieux. where ho gave himself out as a fugitive “Bishop of Petrograd.” Here his astonishing career ended in his arrest.