The following comes from a November 18 San Diego Union-Tribune article by Matt Hamilton:
A man who was convicted of posing as a Roman Catholic priest and selling bogus trips to see Pope Francis returned to court on Friday after investigators discovered that once out of jail, he resumed trying to pass himself off as a man of the cloth.
Erwin Mena, the judge said, was back to doing the same thing he wasn’t supposed to be doing.
Mena, 60, had been convicted in February of grand theft in connection with his scheme to sell fake trips to see the pontiff and he got out of jail in July. LAPD Det. Gary Guevara said he arrested Mena on Nov. 2 after confirming he posed as a priest at a church in the Arts District.
With his arms shackled behind his back, Mena appeared Friday in a downtown courtroom and admitted to violating the terms of his probation.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Frederick N. Wapner castigated Mena for his dishonesty and sentenced him to 264 days in County Jail.
The judge also imposed a special protective order that, upon his release, bars Mena from coming within 100 feet of an Archdiocese of Los Angeles facility.
“You can’t go into a church and pretend you’re a priest,” Wapner told Mena, who was wearing black glasses and blue scrubs issued to jail inmates.
“That’s what you got convicted for and when you got out, you did the same thing.”
The judge rejected Mena’s request to get a week out of jail. Mena had wanted a week out of custody to settle his personal affairs, like the storage of his car and other possessions, Daniels said.
“I don’t trust him,” Wapner said. “I don’t believe him when he says he’s going to come back [to jail]. …. He should have thought of that before he started lying to people.”
Previous CalCatholic articles about Erwin Mena:
Well, if that’s what he identifies as being, who are we to judge? Maybe he was born that way!
I suspect it would’ve been nearly impossible for Mr. Mena to get away with this fraud for so long had the Extraordinary Form of Mass been more ordinary (i.e., in widespread use). Another advantage of the Old Rite.
Amen Your Honor!
Habitual Criminals that prey on the innocent must be marked, so that they will be easily identified by the public.
The removal of the middle finger, would certainly be cause to ask why that happened. Pedophiles and others as well.
Prayer for them alone will not stop their evil ways.
One way to identify criminals who eventually get back out on the streets, to once again practice their old bad ways, is to identify them so that all of the public will be aware of their presence, in order to prevent the wayward ways of those convicted.
The removal of the middle finger, will certainly identify those criminals that prey on the innocent whether young or elderly and those in between as well.
The public can then ask the question of why that particular finger is missing, which will prevent the guilty from the opportunity to commit more crimes against society.
This would surely prevent sexual perverts from preying on the young and would greatly assist parents in identifying those that their children must avoid at all cost.
Now he can pose as a chaplain. Jesuits do it all the time.
He was my guitar teacher, about a 1 years ago