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Catholic Diocese Investigating After Funds Reported Missing At Ambridge Church

AMBRIDGE (KDKA) -- The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh is investigating after a local pastor reported missing funds from his parish in Beaver County.

It's where parishioners go to confess their sins and be inspired.

But for Fr. Joseph Carr of the Good Samaritan Church in Ambridge, when it appeared that money was missing from the church, he had to include that as part of Sunday's Mass.

"We just tell the truth," said Fr. Carr. "We found some irregularities, and we did what we normally do, we let people know and just be open and let people know what's going on."

The pastor doesn't know just how much money is missing from the church.

He reported the problem just over a week ago. Around the same time, KDKA has learned that Good Samaritan's director of music, Br. Ambrose Ross, resigned.

The Catholic Diocese will only confirm that Br. Ambrose has resigned from Good Samaritan. They won't say if he's involved in their investigation into the missing money.

"Someone resigned last week and he quit," said Fr. Ron Lengwin, of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. "And we really don't discuss personnel issues; that's just standard policy."

The Diocese is conducting an audit and internal investigation at Good Samaritan. They've also contacted the police.

"We need to see how much may have been taken, if indeed anything was taken, and then we'll determine from there what we should do, whether it truly reaches the criminal level or not," Fr. Lengwin said.

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