Archdiocese Leaves Priest Acquitted of Embezzlement in Limbo

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

His boss hasn’t taken that away from him, at least.

Yet even after a criminal trial jury failed to 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 Piroli 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 now is pressing his 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 the priest is fighting hard to undo the alleged slander heaped upon him by the church.

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

Bundles of cash and collection envelopes from his parish, found stuffed into the car where he sat with an illegal Mexican immigrant, according to police.

And 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 another $50,000 in cash.

And 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 who accompanied him during his Hollywood arrest.

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

Meanwhile--and these charges also were 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 a saint.

The letters of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini--better known as Mother Cabrini--had been 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 they saw a marked drop in collection receipts during Piroli’s tenure, and told of finding $50,000 in cash in his rooms at the rectory.

And they described hand-counting the cash, including 17,000 one-dollar bills--many still crumpled, wadded or folded into paper airplanes as if they had been taken straight from the collection basket.

Piroli took the stand in his own defense.

Piroli testified that he did keep 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.

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

Yes, he testified, he had indeed emptied his bank accounts of $29,000 in the eight weeks following his disappearance.

But he denied taking any church money. Piroli testified 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.

Then one month into the trial, in dueling motions that rocked the church, the gloves came off:

Prosecutors filed papers seeking to win the court’s permission to introduce evidence that gay pornography, fireworks and a switchblade knife were found in Piroli’s rooms. Motion denied.

And 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 actually stolen the money to finance his own alleged gay lifestyle.

However, the defense was allowed to argue 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.

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But after six weeks of listening to testimony and poring over church ledgers, forensic photos and collection envelopes, the jury ultimately 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 almost completely from public view.

Almost.

A month later, he filed a lawsuit claiming the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles went 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 suit.

The suit, demanding unspecified damages, accused the archdiocese of malicious prosecution, defamation and hiding evidence that could have proved Piroli’s innocence.

And 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 this spring.

Levinson has been busily subpoenaing the ledgers, audits and private correspondence of the archdiocese over the past two years, trying to pry loose information that will bolster Piroli’s case.

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He also has subpoenaed church officials ranging from mid-level accountants up to Cardinal Roger Mahony himself. Mahony has thus far avoided the subpoena, thanks to a protective order from Ventura County Superior Court Judge Barbara Lane.

Meanwhile, lawyers on both sides are lining up “forensic accountants”--professional financial analysts who will dissect the church account books that Levinson tore apart at the criminal trial.

The archdiocese’s lead trial counsel is John McNicholas, who has represented the church in cases reaching as high as the Vatican itself.

And individual archdiocese officials have retained their own attorneys, girding for the fight. The civil trial is set to begin April 28.

So what is Piroli doing with his time?

“Nothing,” Levinson said matter-of-factly.

Piroli still lives with his mother in Burbank, Levinson said.

But the lawyer revealed little else about his client’s life, except this:

“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.”