Father Piroli’s Trial Is Creating Turmoil in Catholic Community : Simi Valley: Archdiocese has responded angrily to the priest’s accusations against his former superior. Nonetheless, St. Peter Claver parish is thriving.

Before a single witness has testified, the collection-plate embezzlement trial of Father David Dean Piroli has already shaken the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

In a case that lists Cardinal Roger Mahony himself among the potential witnesses and leaves some parishioners dismayed, the accused Simi Valley priest has become the accuser.

Piroli’s lawyer charged last week that the priest was framed in the $60,000 thefts by a fellow priest who wanted to hide his own embezzlement of church funds and cloak his gay lifestyle.

Judge Allan Steele allowed the defense, but said he will not let jurors hear any evidence relating to homosexuality. And diocesan officials Thursday angrily attacked all of Piroli’s accusations against Father James McKeon, declaring them “a gross injustice” and the diocese “appalled.” McKeon has declined to comment.

But the tone has been set for a trial that threatens to lay open the usually private affairs of a Catholic parish.

Jurors are expected to see ledgers showing the mysteriously shrinking coffers of St. Peter Claver Church in Simi Valley and Sacred Heart Church in Saticoy, the parishes from which Piroli is accused of taking $60,000.

They are also expected to learn how the case came to light:

On May 27, 1992, a Hollywood merchant’s post-riot jitters led police to investigate his complaint about loiterers outside the Sears store. There, police said they found Piroli sitting in a Chevrolet Lumina belonging to St. Peter Claver Church with a man named Israel Palacios, $10,000 in small bills and small amounts of cocaine.

Los Angeles prosecutors dropped drug charges because the amounts were too small to warrant a case, and embezzlement charges because they were in the jurisdiction of Simi Valley police, who picked up the investigation and filed the case with the Ventura County district attorney. The county’s grand jury indicted Piroli on two counts of grand theft.

As the Piroli trial unfolds, jurors may hear McKeon, former head pastor of St. Peter Claver, describe how he bailed a wired, agitated Piroli out of the Hollywood police lockup following the arrest, only to have him disappear a few days later.

They will be told that while Piroli was missing, church officials discovered another $50,000 in small bills and parishioners’ donation checks in his room at the rectory--although the judge said he will not allow jurors to hear evidence that gay pornography, fireworks and a switchblade knife also were found.

And they will hear testimony about the priest’s arrest six weeks later at the California border, where immigration officers told reporters that they caught him driving in from Mexico with two illegal immigrants--one of them Palacios. Steele said he will not, however, allow testimony that the men were found in the car trunk.

Steele said he will let defense attorney Richard Beada give evidence and argue that McKeon framed Piroli because he feared that the younger priest would blow the whistle on him. But Steele refused to let Beada introduce evidence the lawyer said would back his claim that McKeon was seen at a gay bathhouse in West Hollywood and that the money was taken to finance a gay lifestyle.

Meanwhile, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Peace said in court that she hopes to prove that Piroli was fleecing his flock at both churches--he was assistant pastor at Sacred Heart from 1986 to 1990 and at St. Peter Claver until 1992--to finance a drug habit and ultimately his friendship with Palacios.

Last week, Peace secured the judge’s permission to show jurors a photo Piroli had of Palacios clad only in swim trunks, although Steele said he will not let a police officer testify that Palacios is a male prostitute unless Peace presents evidence of a criminal record.

And she will be allowed to introduce testimony about the drugs found in Piroli’s church-owned car.

Neither attorney is expected to talk much about the case outside court. Steele imposed a gag order on them last week.

Not all the sins alluded to in court in the Piroli case--embezzlement, drug use, immigrant smuggling--will reach the jurors.

But the revelations following Piroli’s 1992 arrest and the countercharges he flung at his former superior last week have saddened his former parishioners, church officials say.

As the trial unfolds, Piroli’s former flock is ready to forgive and forget, said Father Dennis Mongrain, the new head pastor at St. Peter Claver.

“The church is a community of human people, and we are all weak and wounded in our lives. We need God’s help and his healing,” Mongrain said in an interview last week. “When we look at Father Dave and Father Jim, we see a little of ourselves.”

Parishioners seem to be praying for Piroli and McKeon, particularly in light of last week’s allegations, said Richard Hamm, the parish deacon.

But because the priests are no longer with the parish--Piroli was suspended following his arrest and McKeon was transferred in June to a post as senior priest at St. Jude’s Catholic Church in Westlake Village--the people are distancing themselves from the case, Hamm said.

“That’s a long time in people’s lives, and time heals,” he said. “It’s becoming the idea that this is happening some place else and not to us as individuals. . . . It will be a real blessing when this is over and we can get on with our parish life.”

Indeed, the church seems to be prospering in the wake of the scandal.

Parish enrollment is up from 1,500 families to 2,000, and the parish seems filled with new life, Hamm said.

Mongrain has formed new volunteer and social groups for children and teen-agers in the parish, stabilized the church’s financial keel and generally injected new life into the community, Hamm said.

“There seems to be a real resurgence in the fellowship of the people,” Hamm said last week. “We’ve got choirs at all the Masses now, and there’s a real enthusiasm for the services themselves. He’s very good. . . . I think our parish has healed itself pretty much.”

Mongrain came in at a time when McKeon, who founded St. Peter Claver Church nearly 22 years ago, was probably ready to leave, Hamm said.

“When he started the parish in 1972, he was very active and very much like Father Dennis is now,” Hamm said. But growing health problems for the elder priest, now well into his 60s, began impairing his ability to lead the congregation effectively, Hamm said.

“I think the church was in itself ready for change,” said Jim Carper, president of the parish council. “What happened was shocking, but I think the groundwork has been laid for the growth. With Father Dennis arriving on the scene, it was like Shakespeare arriving at the Elizabethan theater. . . . I just think the time was ripe.”

Mongrain agreed that the church was ready for change inside and out.

In the past year, it has received new carpeting, a fresh coat of paint and a grassy front lawn where weeds once poked up through hard-baked dirt.

“There are many signs of life now,” the pastor said. “The church is nearly filled at all the Masses. Collections are up again. People are confident we’re growing again.”

It also wants to restore people’s faith in the church’s business side. Officials have taken to putting out quarterly financial reports and noting in weekly church bulletins how much money comes in and where it is spent, he said.

“I think the people were closely watching me,” Mongrain said. “I felt they were wondering--’What will this priest be like? What will happen with him being pastor here?’ ”

As for St. Jude’s, McKeon’s new parish, churchgoers were dismayed about the charges against Piroli and the countercharges he has leveled against their senior priest.

“I don’t appreciate it,” one parishioner at morning Mass said Friday, declining to give his name. “It’s not something I’d expect out of a priest.”

Another said he believed that Piroli’s defense speaks of guilt.

“I think if I was guilty of something, I’d blame someone else and try to divert attention from myself,” said the man, a Westlake Village resident in his 60s who would not give his name. “I’m of the age where I believe priests are little more than just men.”

“It just doesn’t seem possible that one priest could set up another,” said John Schmidt, a parishioner from Westlake Village. “You’d hope they’d be above that, as priests, especially for the children’s sake. They don’t know that some priests really do have feet of clay--they’re more human than we’d like them to be.”