UK Catholic priest admits entering into sham gay marriage to keep Pakistani from being deported

The mind boggles.

Details from the Daily Mail: 

A high-profile Catholic priest has been suspended after a Mail on Sunday investigation discovered he was in a sham ‘gay marriage’ to help a Pakistani immigrant stay in Britain.

Father Donald Minchew – a former Anglican who converted to Catholicism after attacking the Church of England’s loss  of traditional values – admitted entering into a civil partnership as a favour to a family friend desperate to work in Britain. 

Last night the Home Office said it was ‘determined to crack down on immigration offenders’ and Mustajab Hussain now faces an investigation and possible deportation. 

Father Minchew could also face prosecution for assisting unlawful immigration for entering the sham ‘marriage’ in 2008, while he was still a Church of England vicar.

The civil partnership certificate shows the event at the  register office in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was witnessed by David Nicholas and Edward Minchew, the priest’s brother. 

Confronted by The Mail on Sunday last week Father Minchew said: ‘You are talking to a ruined man. I am finished. End of story.’

The 66-year-old widower and father of four insisted he was not homosexual and claimed  32-year-old Mr Hussain, a Muslim who also has a wife, had been a long-standing family friend as their fathers served together during the Second World War.

The priest claimed his father, the late Harry Minchew, who was in the Royal Marines, met Muhmmad Sadiq, now a retired Pakistani government official, when he was posted to India in 1940. But when

The Mail on Sunday spoke to Mr Sadiq in Islamabad, he said he had never met Mr Minchew nor served in the army. 

Speaking about the civil partnership at his comfortable home in Croydon, South London, the priest said: ‘It was the only way I could see of getting him in the country.’

Under Home Office rules, immigrants in civil partnerships have to show they are in a genuine relationship before they are granted rights to stay in the UK. 

Yet Father Minchew said he and Mr Hussain had not seen each other for ‘donkey’s years’. 

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