EASTON, Pa. – Catholic churches in the Lehigh Valley are alerting people about a scam seeking to deceive parishioners.<\/p>\n
St. Jane Frances de Chantal Parish and the Our Lady of Lebanon Church in Easton are warning parishioners about the scams.<\/p>\n
St. Jane Frances de Chantal Parish says some people are falsely impersonating Catholic priests in text messages, emails, and social media platforms.<\/p>\n
In a Facebook post, the church says scammers are requesting cash or gift cards, claiming they have an urgent need.<\/p>\n
If you receive a message\u2014by text, email, or Facebook Messenger\u2014from someone claiming to be Father Rodgers or any of the priests of St. Jane\u2019s Parish, asking for money, gift cards, or immediate financial assistance, the message did not come from one of the church\u2019s priests, according to the Facebook post.<\/p>\n
The church says to disregard such messages and to not respond to them.<\/p>\n
The church says its priests will never solicit money, gift cards, or emergency assistance through private electronic messages. Such requests are not acts of charity but attempts at fraud, the church said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of care for the well-being of our parish community, we ask you to remain alert, to protect one another, and to report any suspicious messages to the parish office,\u201d the church said in its Facebook post.<\/p>\n
In a Facebook post, Our Lady of Lebanon Church said scammers are contacting parishioners and asking for money.<\/p>\n
The church says any official requests will come directly from the Priest or Bishop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. – Catholic churches in the Lehigh Valley are alerting people about a scam seeking to deceive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,10926,2181,10716,53412,53413,663,53414],"class_list":["post-111734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-catholic-church","tag-easton","tag-fraud","tag-impersonation","tag-parishioners","tag-scam","tag-st-jane-frances-de-chantal-parish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}