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Gratian's avatar

Putting aside the gross misuse of diocesan funds to create such a website (which would create a paper trail for the bishop's negligence and a potential leak in the programmer who could go to the press about this), I'm not entirely sure this would be an issue since it would be hosted on an entirely different site. The QR code is, I imagine, an encoded URL leading to some diocesan website. A wrong URL in a browser is easier to snuff out than a different QR code. And even then, the diocese could also just create an app that the QR code opens instead of the web browser, which the fake URL would not be able to do.

Also, if the bishop is going go through the trouble of creating a fake website just to cover one of his abusive priests, why didn't he just do what he could to prevent Rome from hearing about the abuse to begin with? This is a lot of trouble to go through to cover for a priest who has already been compromised and puts the bishop's own position in jeopardy.

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Pascal's avatar

All good points. This hypothetical (like many scams) does rely on folks not paying close attention, and I think the app idea is a great one. You're right that it'd almost certainly be more trouble than it's worth. It's just that the onetime-cybersecurity-nerd in me quivers at the mention of QR codes and at any possibility for circumvention... I wish I didn't immediately jump to suspicion, but that's where it seems the church is at these days.

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