We’re accustomed, by now, to Catholic priests having eccentric hobbies. Even so, 57-year-old Father Mark Rowles turned out to have a humdinger. At the end of last week, he admitted in court that while, by day, he was a sad sack of a man in late middle age with thinning hair and specs who ministered to a congregation in Cardiff, by night he took on the persona of ‘skinheadlad1488’ in a series of neo-Nazi chatrooms, claiming to be a 16-year-old race warrior who fantasised about bombing mosques and shooting black people in the head.

Father Mark Rowles admitted to taking on the persona of ‘skinheadlad1488’ in neo-Nazi chatrooms

What are we to make of this? It’s hard, isn’t it, to take at face value that someone could combine a career as an armchair genocidaire with a full-time lifelong vocat

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