Woman Tells of Seeing Piroli Take Money From Bank Bag : Courts: Parish educator testifies at embezzlement trial that Simi Valley priest put collection funds into a paper sack.

A parish educator testified Thursday that she once came upon Father David Dean Piroli as he pulled fistfuls of collection money from a bank bag and stuffed it into a paper sack in a back hallway at their Simi Valley church.

“I said, ‘Hello,’ and he did not respond,” said Mary Helen Phillips, education director at St. Peter Claver Church. “He just kept taking the money, looking at it and putting it in the paper bag.”

Phillips said Piroli tried to explain the incident the next day, just a few weeks before his arrest on suspicion of embezzlement. He told her that he was moving the money for the head pastor, Father James McKeon, she said.

“He said, ‘You saw me yesterday morning with a money bag,’ ” Phillips testified. “ ‘I was putting money in the paper sack for Father Jim. Father Jim has lost all the cloth bags, and I had to use a paper sack.’ ”

Piroli, 37, is accused of skimming $60,000 in collection money from his Simi Valley parish and from his previous church, Sacred Heart Church in Saticoy. He is on trial in Ventura County Superior Court on two counts of grand theft.

After Piroli’s arrest on May, 29, 1992, Phillips testified, she and other St. Peter Claver employees found thousands of dollars in cash in his rooms--including Sacred Heart collection envelopes holding coins that children had given.

She ran to get the church’s Polaroid camera and take pictures “in case no one would believe it,” Phillips testified. “I was really shocked with the whole event.”

The photos have been introduced as evidence, along with cloth bank bags found in Piroli’s rooms.

Piroli earned a base monthly salary of $350, said Msgr. Timothy J. Dyer, vicar for clergy for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The priest probably earned up to $250 more per month from stipends--fees that parishioners paid for special Masses that Piroli said, Dyer testified.

But after police in Hollywood found the priest in his church car surrounded by $10,000 in cash and traces of cocaine, Dyer summoned him to explain, he said.

“He said he would (come), but he seemed surprised I wanted to see him--which surprised me,” Dyer testified.

“He began to speak as soon as he came in about what had happened,” Dyer said. “He said that the money was his, and that it was money that he had saved up since his ordination--that it was from stipends he’d received.

“That was his practice. He kept it in sacks (in) the back of his car because he didn’t like to take it to the bank,” Dyer said.

Dyer said Msgr. Terence Richey, another priest listening to Piroli’s account, interrupted.

“Msgr. Richey stopped at one point and said, ‘David, I want you to know as we talk that up until now, the things you’ve told us to explain the money and evidence of cocaine in the car--I just don’t believe you,’ ” Dyer testified.

But Piroli insisted that he was innocent and that the money was from stipends he’d saved over the years, Dyer said.

Shortly after Piroli’s arrest, he was visited in Ventura County Jail by Dyer and the head of the archdiocese, Cardinal Roger Mahony.

“We visit any of our priests who are in jail. It doesn’t happen very often, thanks be to God,” Dyer said.

But over two hours of conversation, Piroli repeatedly snubbed Mahony’s requests for an explanation, Dyer said.

Often joking, Piroli continually changed the subject and chattered about everyday occurrences “as if we weren’t in jail,” Dyer testified.

“The cardinal asked him, ‘David, there’s a lot of people that are affected by this, and a lot of people scandalized about this, and we need to address this,’ ” Dyer said.

“And (Piroli) said, ‘I’m sorry; I’m advised by my counsel not to talk about that,’ and he turned the discussion back to everyday things,” he added.

Piroli also told the cardinal that he was worried that the jail interview room might be bugged, Dyer said.

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Piroli said nothing in the discussion to set his mind at ease, he said.

“It was my opinion that there was something untrue in his story. What it was, I don’t know,” Dyer said. “I found his entire presentation, his affect in the time I spent with him, more than two hours, very bizarre.”

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Richard Beada, Dyer said the diocese never received complaints about Piroli. But he said some parishioners had expressed fears to the diocese about the financial stability of St. Peter Claver.

During a break in testimony, Dyer walked over and warmly shook Piroli’s hand. And when the vicar finished testifying, the two priests walked together down the courthouse hallway, chatting amiably.

Testimony is scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. Monday before Judge Allan L. Steele.