Cathedral dean accused of stealing baseball cards from Walmart

The Very Reverend Aidan Smith, head priest of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Pittsburgh, was arrested while leaving Walmart with 27 packs of baseball cards concealed on his person. Charged with retail theft, Smith was reportedly on Walmart's radar due to earlier incidents; security personnel summoned the cops when they saw him again.

Police responded to a call from Walmart security, who said Smith was in the store again after having stolen from it in previous days. Police said Walmart security video shows Smith also taking baseball cards each of the four previous days and leaving without paying. Walmart valued the stolen baseball cards at $1,099.99, police said.

Bishop Ketlen Solak wrote to members that church officials were conducting their own investigation—"I have spoken with Aidan and assured him of our prayers for him in this difficult time"—and noted that he had been on administrative leave since January, without explaining why.

Sticky-fingered priests' ill-gotten gains are often not so trivial: last year, a priest in Iowa was charged with stealing $164,000 from his rural parish.

Travis Clark, a former pastor at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Pearl River, Louisiana, upset his career and his flock by filming himself having sex with dominatrices Lady Vi and Empress Ming on the church altar. It took him 5 years to get back the cellphones, tablets, computers, gaming consoles, flash drives, and memory cards seized by cops.

Police responded to the church after they were called by the passerby, who took a cellphone video of what he could see. Beside arresting the group, officers confiscated stage lights, recording devices and sex toys.

New Orleans archbishop Gregory Aymond – whose archdiocese had filed for federal bankruptcy protection months earlier amid the fallout of a decades-old clergy child molestation scandal – had the altar burned and consecrated a replacement.