Decades of baptisms have been invalidated after a Catholic priest discovered he was not baptising people properly.
Phoenix based priest, Father Andres Arango has resigned after it was discovered that he had been performing baptisms wrong for 20 years.
Sure, we’ve all made our fair share of mistakes at work, but botching your main duty more than a thousand times is a new level of mess-up.
The brutally small mistake Arango made was as simple as saying, “We baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” rather than “I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Arango made that mistake while performing more than a thousand baptisms during his priesthood, all of which have been revoked.
Authorities of the Catholic Church explained that nobody can change “anything in the liturgy on his own authority.”
Arango’s church in Phoenix have posted on their website, announcing that they are working with those who were not baptised properly to organise a new ceremony.
Bishop Thomas Olmsted wrote a letter to members of the parish which read, “I do not believe Fr. Andres had any intentions to harm the faithful or deprive them of the grace of baptism and the sacraments.”
Similar mistakes have been made before, and there are even priests who have been baptised a second time because the first was performed incorrectly.
It all seems a bit harsh considering what so many other priests have managed to get away with.
