A Croatian church congregation is refusing to attend mass until their priest, sacked for ringing a phone sex line, is reinstated. Villagers are backing Father Ljubomir Simunovic who insists he was tricked into calling a sex line operator who asked him for guidance, he rang up a 16,000 pounds sterling bill after spending hours on the phone at peak times with the woman helping her to pray for deliverance.

Father Simunovic said: ?I had no idea she was working on a sex hotline, I didn?t even know such a thing existed. ?I thought I was helping a woman who had returned to God after her divorce while struggling to support a son on her own.

The priest has been suspected by church officials while an investigation is carried out. But almost 1,000 villagers representing almost the entire population of Runovi staged a demonstration in front of the church this week demanding the return of Father Simunovic. Meanwhile the woman at the centre of the scandal has confirmed there was no sexual contact between them and also admitted that she told him she was 25 instead of her age of 47.