Man jailed for selling fake trips to see Pope
‘You can’t go into a church and pretend you’re a priest,’ Los Angeles judge scolds
LOS ANGELES— 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.”
Mena’s public defender, Denise Daniels, objected to such a broad protective order and argued that it put her client in jeopardy since he was being followed by television news reporters. She said Mena could unknowingly violate the terms of the order.
“You could be walking next to a Catholic archdiocese location and not even know it,” Daniels added.
The judge disagreed and also 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.”