Priest Pleads Not Guilty to 2 Felonies : Courts: Charge that he possessed stolen letters written by a saint is added to that of embezzlement. A Ventura County courtroom is packed.

A Simi Valley priest accused of embezzling more than $43,000 of his parishioners’ donations also kept stolen letters written by America’s first saint locked in a safe in his room, prosecutors charged Thursday.

Father David Piroli, 36, pleaded not guilty in Ventura County Superior Court to one charge each of grand theft by embezzlement and receiving stolen property.

If convicted of both felonies, the priest faces up to 3 years and 8 months in prison, in a case that has spanned international borders and stunned members of the close-knit St. Peter Claver Church where he served two years as assistant pastor.

The accusation that Piroli possessed the stolen letters of a saint was the latest twist in a case that began in May when the priest was arrested in Hollywood on a drug charge.

The bound volume of letters by Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, better known as Mother Cabrini, was found in Piroli’s personal safe during a search conducted after he fled Ventura County in early June.

The letters had been stolen from a locked, non-circulating library at the seminary from which Piroli graduated in 1986, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Peace.

Officials at St. John’s Seminary at Camarillo learned that the book was missing last week when questioned by Ventura County investigators.

“It was a surprise to us,” said Father Gabino Zavala, president of the seminary’s graduate school. “I’m not sure it was going to get a lot of money in the open market, but because of the historical nature, it has some value to us.”

Piroli’s former students and parishioners packed the courtroom Thursday, some curious about his charges, others eager to show support.

“When he talked to us, it never appeared he could do something like that,” said Betsy Sassen, 16, a former religion student of Piroli’s. “But I don’t know all the facts.”

Piroli’s dizzying trip through the legal system began May 27, when Los Angeles police officers in Hollywood arrested him in a church-owned car with a small amount of cocaine and $10,000 in small bills, including some in church collection envelopes.

Another $50,000 in cash was found during a search of Piroli’s room at the church rectory, including some in collection envelopes and parishioners’ donation checks.

Shortly before the Los Angeles district attorney dropped charges of drug possession and embezzlement in June for lack of evidence and lack of jurisdiction, respectively, Piroli disappeared.

He resurfaced July 30 at the Mexican border, driving into California with two illegal immigrants in the trunk of his newly purchased car.

Authorities arrested Piroli that night on federal charges of alien-smuggling and returned him to Ventura County on an arrest warrant for suspicion of embezzlement.

Court documents show that while he was earning only $400 a month as assistant pastor at St. Peter Claver Church, Piroli made deposits of more than $40,000 into 14 bank accounts in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

Prosecutors said they are investigating the possibility that Piroli took money from Sacred Heart Church in Saticoy, where he served for four years before his appointment to St. Peter Claver in 1990.

He is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail in the Ventura County Jail.

Mother Cabrini came to America in 1889 at the urging of Pope Leo XIII to minister to Italian immigrants. She founded orphanages, convents, nurseries, hospitals and schools throughout the United States. At one point, she settled in Burbank.

She was canonized in 1946, 29 years after her death.

Mother Cabrini wrote to Bishop Thomas Conaty in a series of letters that were bound and eventually made part of the library at St. John’s Seminary, Peace said. Conaty, an Irish educator, served as the sixth bishop of Monterey-Los Angeles from 1903 until his death in 1915.