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www.medjugorje.ws » Text version » Medjugorje News & Articles » Falsified letter defending self-styled "Friend of Medjugorje" Terry Colafrancesco and Caritas of Birmingham and abuse of identity of Ed and Patsy Locks

Falsified letter defending self-styled "Friend of Medjugorje" Terry Colafrancesco and Caritas of Birmingham and abuse of identity of Ed and Patsy Locks

Other languages: English, Español

"For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, who masquerade as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan masquerades as an angel of light. So it is not strange that his ministers also masquerade as ministers of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds."

2 Corinthians 11:13-15

"Terry has very cleverly and carefully lied about the mission of Caritas from the very beginning for the purpose of control and money." [1]

Michael J. O'Neill, resident and member of Caritas of Birmingham for 7 years

Edward and Patricia Locks are now for over 10 years concerned parents of their daughters Erin and Jenny living in Caritas of Birmingham.

Recently someone attempting to defend Caritas of Birmingham and its leader, self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje" (Terry Colafrancesco), posted a letter attributed to Edward and Patricia Locks. This letter was not posted or written by the Locks. The originator of this letter is guilty of fraud.

A bogus letter attributed to Edward and Patricia Locks totally misrepresents their relationship with Caritas

The offender has composed letter dated on January 10, 2011 which was titled "Old false information about Caritas of Birmingham and its founder, Terry Colafrancesco, also known as A Friend of Medjugorje". The fabricator impersonated the letter as it would be written by "Ed and Patsy Locks", see Figure 1 (i.e. this letter was falsely attributed to “Ed and Patsy Locks”).

The fraudster than let the fabricated letter to be published on multiple online sites: blog "Friends of Caritas", run for several years and posing itself as "The Unofficial Caritas Blog" (see Figure 2 ) and on two newly created blogs, with no other content than the bogus letter: edlocks.blogspot.com (see Figure 3 ) and Defending Caritas, see Figure 4 . Click on thumbnails of figures to see them larger. The latter two blogs never contained any other content and were obviously created for the sole purpose of presenting the fabricated letter and were therefore very likely created by the fraud himself.

The author of the falsified letter had attempted to forge absurd and non-sense claims and associate them to Edward and Patricia Locks, including for example:

"We want to publicly state that we refuted, years ago, these lies we worked to spread with others to bring down Caritas and its founder."

"We recanted our slanders [sic] against Caritas after realizing we were duped by people who had an agenda to destroy the reputation of the founder of Caritas and its mission, falsely portraying Caritas as a cult" and

"To be clear, my wife and I were used and coerced by others who were trying at that time to destroy the mission of Caritas and its founder. We regret all the actions on our part and we have separated from all of these people."

The fraud, cloaking himself in the falsified letter as "Ed and Patsy Locks" also did not miss his opportunity to advertise the pilgrimage business of "A Friend of Medjugorje" / Caritas of Birmingham, when he tried to manipulate the readers for: ... "going on pilgrimage to Medjugorje with Caritas of Birmingham. We encourage you to do so in order to experience the peace that Our Lady promises"(!), see Figure 1 .

The bogus letter didn't contain some of the reported bizarre wisdom of Terry Colafrancesco / "A Friend of Medjugorje", such as that there is no priest on Earth that is capable of understanding Colafrancesco mission, that "niggers" were created by God for servitude and were much better off when they were slaves, that going to a restaurant, buying a gallon of milk or a newspaper on Sunday is mortal sin equal to murder or adultery [2] , and calling readers to "Caritas, which does the most important work in the world". It also did not contain enlightened advices from "A Friend of Medjugorje", such as: "By not being fool, you can presently take worthless fiat paper dollars and buy as much silver as you can before everyone else who are fools wake up". But perhaps such and other similar hooeys might yet appear in possibly more fabricated letters to come.

Ed and Patsy Locks are not authors of the mentioned falsified letter

The letter was not written by Edward and Patricia Locks. Ed and Patsy Locks contacted Caritas of Birmingham already on 17. January 2011 and told them that both the bogus blog in Ed Locks name (edlocks.blogspot.com) and also the bogus letter must be removed, as it was "clearly written by Terry Colafrancesco".

As of today (7. March 2011), neither the bogus blog Defending Caritas nor the falsified letter placed on the blog have been removed, see Figure 5 . However, very soon after the intervention of Locks, the letter was removed from the blog edlocks.blogspot.com and the whole blog was deleted (see Figure 6 ). The letter was also silently removed from the blog called "Friends of Caritas". Some deceived followers of Caritas of Birmingham were meanwhile passing links to the fake letter placed on bogus blog Defending Caritas to few online Catholic discussion forums.

The fabricated letter is dated 10. January 2011 and was published after only 2 days after we had published our document containing additional gravely disturbing information regarding "Caritas of Birmingham" and self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje". Our document, based solely on publicly available documents and testimonies of former Caritas of Birmingham members and their closest relatives, clearly demonstrated that Caritas of Birmingham with it's leader "A Friend of Medjugorje" (Terry Colafrancesco) very well fits the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) criteria for the cult classification [3] . The mentioned fake letter was therefore an obvious attempt to confuse and manipulate people of Medjugorje movement and to try to cover-up and downplay this grave information.

Excerpt from an authentic letter of Patricia Locks

Here we present a small part of an excerpt from a document about what the Locks really had to say regarding Caritas of Birmingham and Terry Colafrancesco - self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje", already in 2001:

... "My beautiful Erin, 22 was very fond of him. He was on her BVM tour she led for Caritas. Erin was very bright and out-going and loved life and spoke out always to defend her faith in high school. She got an Honors Scholarship to college and was their top student they sent around the country her Freshman year. She wanted to be a BSN and help the sick like Mother Teresa etc. She also wanted a family more than anything. After we sent her to Medj with Greg and Caritas the summer after her Freshman year she came back and wanted to drop out of college because it was all "BAD" and Terry does not believe in higher Ed. at all (naturally!) We were devasted, but said she could take a semester off to pray. After 1 month at Caritas she told us she was never going back and she had "grown spiritually higher than us at Caritas"!!! This was an 18 year old whom we had to force to go to Medj, that summer because she had a summer job! That is when we got a Catholic Atty to go to Bishop F. for us, and the Bis. said I cannot do anything because they are not affiliated with the Church-as you heard him say."

"The sickest thing was when she told us Terry told her it was a sign when Mother Teresa died, that year, 4 years ago, that she was "called to Caritas which does the most important work in the world"!!! We had wanted her to pray at Mother's house she has near our home then in Memphis. This beautiful young vibrant and good woman is now "sacrificing her life to make up for the sin of playing sports in high school" per terry!!! She is 6 ft tall and played all sports and was a great player for her Catholic school where her Dad was Principal for years. I called her my Lizzie Sunshine and she used to smile all the time-no longer-those that left told us how she suffered! Terry has "consecrated her a single woman for life"! Sorry, to go on about my kids, you are a father-hopefully you will understand!"

"Our Jenny quit a good job as an awesome writer for a hometown newspaper in St. Augustine, Fl-the religion page! But Terry says ALL the media is BAD and she was to be married but Terry did not approve! The young man was devasted she left for Caritas and did not ever contact him again-terry’s advice!"

"WE WILL TRUST AND WAIT for Jesus and Mary-Much thanks and prayers for YOUR ministry

-Love the Locks"

The rest of the excerpt is published at [4] . To date (7. March 2011), no retraction of this letter was ever written by Edward or Patricia Locks.

Excerpt from the document "A Friend of Medjugorje (Terry Colafrancesco) fits the profile of a cult leader --

and his group “Caritas of Birmingham” can be classified as a cult according to criteria of International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA)", published on 8th January 2011 [3] :

  • Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

    Those who have questioned Terry Colafrancesco’s authority have been banished and accused of spreading slander. Relatives who are critical of Terry Colafrancesco ("A Friend of Medjugorje") are denied access to their adult children who still reside at Caritas of Birmingham. Mail and phone calls never reach their loved ones.

    See e.g. here: “Greg is my only son and we used to be so very close and now living in "Our Lady's loving community that SHE ESTABLISHED HERSELF" He will not see or speak with me unless I totally agree with and support Terry!” [4]

    And e.g. here: “If we call, they hang up. If we send a letter, she doesn't get any mail” ... “His reasoning for doing that is because the outside world will poison the purity of the community and that's the way Koresh was, that's the way Jones was.” [5]

And the Truth Will Set you Free

Thanks God, a partial consolation and satisfaction was in recent years given to sorely tried parents Edward and Patricia Locks. One of children of Ed and Patsy Locks, Greg has renounced and left Caritas of Birmingham and self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje" (Terry Colafrancesco).

We condemn actions of the fraud who committed shameful fabrications and deceptions associated with the mentioned publication of falsified letter and abusing of identity of Ed and Patsy Locks, as well as bringing further troubles and suffering to sorely tried Locks family. The character and events of the actions, as well as the fact that the fabricator chose to abuse identity of just Edward and Patricia Locks, who have two daughters still living at Caritas of Birmingham, points out to fabricator's cynical, unscrupulous, vicious and fraudulent character.

We encourage you to distrust anyone who would in future again attempt to refute first hand testimonies of many former members of Caritas of Birmingham witnesses, who were living for years at the Caritas of Birmingham site at Sterret, Alabama and their closest relatives. Very probably, such refutations from an eventual "defender" of self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje" and Caritas of Birmingham, would be again only just lies, fabrications and deceptions, made in motivation to further confuse, manipulate and fool the people of Medjugorje movement, as it was exposed in this particular case of recent fake letter and abuse of Ed and Patsy Locks identity. We therefore recommend you to always consider such refutations as fabrications, until proven otherwise.

Also do not trust anybody, who would attempt to rationalize, excuse, or suggest you to cover-up gravely disturbing facts, activities and first hand testimonies related to Caritas of Birmingham and self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje", by means of dubious interpretation, misuse and distortion of Holy Scripture and/or Medjugorje messages and phenomenon to support their views and agenda. Do not let such individuals to fool you, manipulate you and silence you. Instead of that, do not be afraid to raise your voice and especially do not hesitate to warn your friends and loved ones [6] . Namely young people and those, who are for a very first time hearing about Medjugorje and opening to spirituality are in particular danger of being manipulated and deceived.

Finally, please pray from all your heart and keep in your mind constant concern and remembrance for all those for whom encounter with Medjugorje phenomenon and its associates would not bring spiritual renewal and peace, but instead it will expose them to suffering, loss, enslavement, deceptions, mourning or abuse. Yes, also such people do exist and need our special concern and love expressed in our actions.

References

All documents quoted in this article, together with additional detailed information on Caritas of Birmingham and self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje" (Terry Colafrancesco) are available in English and Italian languages online at:
https://www.medjugorje.ws/en/articles/caritas-of-birmingham/

 

 

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