Priest in Limbo in Wake of Theft Charges

Despite the scandalous allegations, Father David Dean Piroli is still a priest.

Yet even after a criminal trial jury did not convict Piroli of embezzling church collection money or any other wrongdoing, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has left the former Simi Valley assistant pastor with neither parish nor congregation.

Piroli has no assignment, nor any regular duties for the church, diocesan officials say. What he does have is a lawyer, and a lawsuit: He has accused the archdiocese of defaming his character and ruining his career.

And he is asking to be compensated for the losses that resulted from that day nearly five years ago when Hollywood police reported finding $10,000 in cash, small amounts of cocaine and church collection envelopes in his parish car.

Piroli and diocesan officials have declined to comment on the lawsuit.

His lawyer’s comments were terse:

“He isn’t assigned to a parish, the cardinal won’t assign him anyplace,� said Douglas Levinson of Santa Monica, who defended Piroli three years ago at his criminal trial and is pressing the lawsuit against the church. “Basically, he just--by informal agreement--doesn’t perform priestly offices.�

But Piroli’s lawsuit file, now bulging with 10 thick volumes of legal wrangling, shows that the priest is fighting hard to undo the alleged slander heaped upon him by the church.

In 1992, it seemed quite the scandal: a popular priest accused of embezzlement.

Bundles of cash and collection envelopes from his parish were found stuffed into the car where he sat with an illegal Mexican immigrant, according to police. And there were charges of drug possession--later dropped--after police said they found small amounts of cocaine in Piroli’s car.

But it was not until three days later that things turned really strange for the case of Father David Dean Piroli: After briefly resuming his work, he abruptly disappeared from his Simi Valley parish, St. Peter Claver Church.

While he was gone, church employees searched his rooms at the rectory and reported finding an additional $50,000 in cash. Prosecutors began building a case for charging the priest with embezzlement.

Eight weeks later, in August 1992, Piroli resurfaced: U.S. immigration agents said they caught him driving over the border at Calexico with two illegal immigrants in his trunk--one being Israel Palacios, the man with him during his Hollywood arrest.

Piroli was jailed briefly until parishioners posted a house and $10,000 cash to cover his $100,000 bail.

Meanwhile--and these charges were also later dropped--prosecutors accused Piroli of receiving stolen property after a locked safe in his room was found to contain a bound volume of letters written by St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, better known as Mother Cabrini, missing from the Camarillo seminary from which Piroli graduated.

After nearly a year of intense preparation, the sensational embezzlement trial began in January 1994. Prosecution witnesses testified that they had seen a marked drop in collection receipts during Piroli’s tenure, and told of finding $50,000 in cash--much of it in crumpled $1 bills--in his rooms at the rectory.

Piroli testified that he had kept wedding and baptism fees as well as a personal collection of rare currency totaling $8,000 to $10,000 in his bedside cabinet--and $900 in the church car for emergencies. But he said he had no idea how the rest of the cash got into his bedroom and office at the rectory.

Piroli said he fled Simi Valley after his arrest because he feared for his life upon hearing a church employee say that his car had been tampered with.

Yes, he testified, he had indeed emptied his bank accounts of $29,000 in the eight weeks after his disappearance. But he denied taking any church money, testifying that he spent the money from his accounts during an eight-week stay in Mexico while he was working to reunite Palacios with his family in Mexico City in hopes of breaking the man’s cocaine addiction. The cocaine found in the parish car by Hollywood police belonged to Palacios, he told jurors.

A month into the trial, prosecutors filed papers seeking to win the court’s permission to introduce evidence that gay pornography, fireworks and a switchblade were found in Piroli’s rooms. The motion was denied.

Piroli’s lawyers sought--but failed to win--permission to argue that Piroli’s head pastor was seen at a gay bathhouse in West Hollywood and had stolen the money to finance his own alleged gay lifestyle.

However, the defense was allowed to allege that the senior pastor had doctored the parish’s books and planted the money in Piroli’s car and rooms. The archdiocese angrily denied that allegation.

After six weeks of listening to testimony and poring over church ledgers, forensic photos and collection envelopes, the jury failed to back the prosecution.

Jurors found Piroli not guilty of embezzling money from Sacred Heart Church in Ventura, his former parish where collections had also fallen off. And when it came to charges that Piroli stole $50,000 from St. Peter Claver in Simi Valley, they deadlocked 9 to 3 in favor of acquittal. The judge declared a mistrial, and prosecutors decided not to retry the case.

A free man, Piroli, then 37, disappeared from public view, only to resurface a month later when he filed a lawsuit charging that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles had gone out of its way to help prosecute him.

“No one--not even the Holy Father himself--should put him or herself above the law,� Piroli declared at a news conference announcing the lawsuit.

The suit, demanding unspecified damages, accused the archdiocese of malicious prosecution, defamation and hiding evidence that could have proved Piroli’s innocence. It specifically accused a former diocese attorney, David Patrick Callahan, of slandering Piroli by implying after his acquittal that the priest had gotten away with embezzlement.

Callahan settled Piroli’s claims for an undisclosed amount. But the rest of the lawsuit against the archdiocese is quietly wending its way toward a Ventura County Superior Court trial that is set to begin April 28.

And what is Piroli doing in the meantime?

“Nothing,� Levinson said matter-of-factly. “I think the archdiocese basically has him kind of in a professional limbo. . . .

“He goes to Mass. He reads. And he waits to see what’s going on.�