FARNHAM vicar Simon Reynolds has reportedly ’gone on the run’ just hours before being found guilty of stealing £24,000 from his former parish in Yorkshire.

Mr Reynolds, of Upper Church Lane, failed to return to Sheffield Crown Court for the verdict on Thursday afternoon and a warrant has been issued for his arrest.

The money was paid to him for weddings and funerals while he was priest-in-charge at All Saints Church in Darton, near Barnsley, between March 2007 and March 2013.

In his absence, a jury found Mr Reynolds guilty of all four charges of theft, after which judge Julian Goose said a custodial sentence was inevitable.

Mr Reynolds took over as rector of St Andrew’s Church, Farnham, in March 2013 but was suspended by the Diocese of Guildford just over six months later after his arrest by South Yorkshire Police.

He denied all charges against him, the first three of which relate to fees that should have been sent to the Wakefield Diocesan Board of Finance, for marriages, funeral and churchyard monuments respectively. The fourth count relates to fees for monuments that should have gone to the parochial church council.

On the opening of his trial, the court heard it was Mr Reynolds’ responsibility to hand over the various fees to the diocese and parochial church council but an investigation by the church and then the police showed he had only passed on a fraction of the money received.

Prosecutor Thomas Storey said concerns were first raised by a church warden, who thought it was irregular that a fees cheque from a stonemason relating to a church yard monument was made out personally to the former vicar.

The church treasurer worked out that Mr Reynolds had conducted eight out of 18 weddings in the parish in 2008. The diocese should have received a fee of £150 for each wedding, a total of £1,200, but the defendant only handed over £555. The treasurer concluded there was a £4,594 shortfall in fees for weddings during Mr Reynolds’ period at the church.

The court also heard there were monuments in the graveyard for 23 burials with no entry in the church’s burials book, and a further 50 cremation plaques or inscriptions in the church grounds were similarly unrecorded. The alleged shortfall in payments for funerals was thought to be just over £10,000, with an additional £9,726 in unpaid fees for burial and cremation plaques or monuments.

Mr Reynolds denied to police that he took the money to pay for his living expenses and had money he could draw on. He could not explain where the apparently missing money had gone, but said he was very disorganised.

Speaking after Mr Reynolds’ conviction, the Archdeacon of Surrey, Stuart Beake said the vicar remained suspended and disciplinary action would be decided after he was sentenced.