Fallen Angel

In the letter he also complains that the congregation was not coughing up the money they pledged, yet the church was buying adjacent properties that hadn't been budgeted for.

"The church bit off more than it could chew," Frey says. "I told Mike we needed to do a feasibility study. If we were having trouble paying our bills today, why are we doing a building of that magnitude?"

But the church had another problem. As a member of MCC, the cathedral was required to contribute 15 percent of its monthly income to the denomination. According to MCC's chief financial officer, Margaret Mahlman, the cathedral paid anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 a month, depending on donations.

There simply wasn't enough money to go around.

The church cut off contributions to the denomination. From February 1997 to December 1999, the church either didn't pay or underpaid and quickly racked up $250,000 in arrears, Mahlman says. During this time the church stopped sending in required financial statements to MCC headquarters or to the district office and ignored the monthly reminders, she says.

"Churches typically do one of two things when they have financial difficulty: They work out a reduced payment or they get mad at us about funding, they protest and quit paying," Mahlman says.

Though she says she wasn't sure which it was in the case of the cathedral, former board members suggest that Piazza made it abundantly clear that he resented answering to the denomination.

A former executive director who agreed to speak on condition that she not be identified says Piazza asked MCC for a deferment because the cathedral needed the cash flow for construction and the purchase of properties.

MCC negotiated a reduction in contributions by half, the remainder to be made up of in-kind services and materials. But even that the church carried out in the most cursory way, sources say, bundling up outdated fliers of local events held at the church and shipping them to MCC's Los Angeles headquarters. MCC spokesman Birkitt says no one at headquarters understood how the fliers would be remotely useful.

Frey says board members occasionally would question Piazza's decisions and the direction of the church, but doing so meant risking humiliation before the board.

"He brought employees and staff to tears," she says. "He called them stupid and idiot." The verbal abuse was a pattern she would see played out time and again. When the director of administration was ignored after alerting the board to a potentially serious insurance problem, Frey resigned.

Piazza's response was to undermine her credibility, she says.

"He told people--board and staff--that I was sexually abused as a child and that I was resigning because I was having a nervous breakdown," she says, shaking her head. "He gave a sermon about people with 'daddy issues.' I told him those experiences in confidence."

The episode left her jaded and weary, but still she says she loved the church and friends in the congregation.

"People think he [Piazza] is the church and without him the church will crumble," she says.

Former board member Kathy Harper, who served as chair of the cathedral's building design team, says she finally quit the board because Piazza was so abusive. "If you didn't agree with what was being presented to you, you would be verbally attacked and ridiculed," she says. "I felt I was being attacked personally, not just in my position. It was a very frequent occurrence, and at some point I just ran out of energy to be able to continue."

Emperor's Clothes

"If I did one thing wrong, it was not turning their asses in," former director of administration Jean Morris says of Piazza and senior board members.

She alleges that in 1997 senior church leaders, at Piazza's behest, asked her to add volunteers such as Roger Stanley, who was HIV-positive, to the church's insurance policy even though only full-time paid employees were eligible.

Church policy stated that employees working more than 30 hours a week were eligible for health insurance but said nothing about volunteers. When finance director Bruce Ehrhardt asked her to start the necessary paperwork, she called the insurance carrier to see whether full-time volunteers could be considered employees and was told no. The church had the option, however, of purchasing an individual plan through another company, but then Stanley's medical history would have to be disclosed.

She reported her early findings via e-mail to the board of directors in July 1997. Piazza responded with a terse e-mail that started, "Then find another company who will." He chastised her for contacting the insurance company, saying she "may have done some serious damage."

"This is a case where 'no' is not an acceptable answer because we can't have people with HIV and no insurance. I don't know if this is really your area or Bruce's, but we have to keep turning this problem over until we find a solution," he stated in an e-mail.

An e-mail dated July 17, 1997, from director of cathedral services Joyce Bell to Morris, confirms that Stanley was not a paid employee:

"Roger Stanley just mentioned to me...that his...insurance is running out next month. I would like to set him up on our insurance policy at that time...Of course, this would be paid by the church. I understand that since he is not a paid staff [member] this might be a challenge to do but would like to work it out."