But the resignation of Chaldean Catholic Bishop Emanuel Shaleta has not yet been accepted by the Vatican, and sources say Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Sako is aiming to see the bishop retain a place in Church leadership.
According to documents reviewed by The Pillar, parish finance council members at St. Peter’s Chaldean Cathedral in El Cajon, California, noticed in November 2024 an unusual banking pattern that indicated the possibility of embezzlement.
The parish owns a social hall which is leased to an outside management firm for some $33,990 monthly. Rent was typically paid to the parish by the outside management company with a check. But in November 2024, the rent check deposited into the parish bank account came from a different bank account.
Records show that the rent for the hall that month was paid to the parish, not from an external source, but from another parish-based bank account, kept separately as a fund for financial assistance to the poor.
Records reviewed by The Pillar indicate that when parish leaders asked Shaleta about it, the bishop said he had instructed the management company to pay him the full amount in cash, so that he could distribute money to needy families directly, and that he had “reimbursed” the parish with money from the financial assistance account.
When finance council members checked past bank records — which have also been reviewed by The Pillar — they discovered that eight months worth of rent checks had been written to the parish from its own financial assistance account, all of them signed by Shaleta.
For all of those eight months, the rent had been paid in cash, directly to Shaleta, at Shaleta’s direction.
An audit of records for both parish accounts found other transactions in which Shaleta seems to have accepted cash on behalf of the parish for activity fees or services, and then “reimbursed” the parish from the charity assistance account.
In total, at least $427,345 in cash was appropriated by Shaleta — with corresponding “reimbursement checks” drawn from the parish charity account and all signed by the bishop. There were also checks written to other entities from the charity account, including a $7,500 check signed by Shaleta to the Fogo de Chao steakhouse.
And sources told The Pillar that other questionable transactions added up to the possibility of up to $1 million embezzled from the parish, which also functions practically as the eparchial curia.
Among the other transactions discovered was $30,000 in cash Shaleta seems to have accepted from parishioners for perpetual Mass enrollments offered for their deceased family members, with “reimbursement” to the parish again coming from its charity account, through a check signed by the bishop.
In documents reviewed by The Pillar, Shaleta claimed the cash he took had been distributed for charity in both the U.S. and several other countries, but the bishop did not have substantiating paperwork confirming distributions, nor demonstrate why he hadn’t simply withdrawn funds directly from the charity account for charitable purposes.
According to sources close to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Eastern Churches, the possibility of financial fraud was reported in 2025 by parish leaders both to U.S. apostolic nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre and to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.
The Pillar has confirmed that a sheriff’s investigation is currently underway in the case, with forensic accountants reportedly reviewing the bishop’s financial history before the possibility of criminal charges. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a request for comment from The Pillar.
In addition to a criminal investigation, The Pillar obtained documents confirming a Vatican-ordered investigation into Shaleta, which was delegated in July 2025 to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez.
As part of that investigation, attorneys and canonists from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles interviewed last year Chaldean Catholics with knowledge of the allegations, and reviewed financial records.
In addition to banking records indicating the prospect of embezzlement, the investigation’s dossier includes evidence of other unusual or improper conduct on the part of Shaleta, including allegations of sexual misconduct.
Among the allegations reported to the Vatican by Chaldean Catholics is that Shaleta regularly crossed the border from San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico during late night hours to visit a large strip club where prostitution is regularly practiced.
A private investigator’s report submitted to the Dicastery for Eastern Catholic Churches reported the allegation that Shaleta made late-night border crossings more than one dozen times in a single month, and only decreased that practice to a “couple times a week” after the bishop was questioned about it directly.
The investigation report confirms that a private detective observed Shaleta parking his car in a remote lot “specifically reserved for people going to Hong Kong Gentlemen’s Club” — an establishment regularly referred to in local media and in online reviews as a brothel, and flagged by human rights journalists as “a brothel where trafficked women and girls are forced to work in the sex trade.”
From the parking lot, the private investigator noted, the bishop boarded a shuttle vehicle “exclusive to visitors going to the Hong Kong Club.”
The private detective, Wade Dudley, is a retired FBI special agent. He spoke with The Pillar about his investigation, after receiving permission from the clients who commissioned his report.
Dudley emphasized to The Pillar that he is “a retired FBI agent with 20 years in the private investigative world. We don’t provide our opinions. We provide facts and observations.”
“Having said that, we saw his car park in a parking lot that was exclusively for patrons of Hong Kong, and we’ve seen him walking to the border and across the border, and we have seen him get picked up by a third-party ride share that exclusively takes customers to that establishment,” he said.
Dudley’s report noted another unusual and longstanding situation in Shaleta’s life.
The investigator reported that Shaleta has held for years a joint personal bank account with a woman who was the parish secretary when Shaleta was a pastor in Michigan.
In 2025 the bank account’s balance was in excess of $40,000, and appeared to receive regular deposits from Shaleta.
When Shaleta became in 2015 the eparch for Chaldean Catholics in Canada, the woman “started making frequent visits to Toronto, staying either at a nearby hotel or at his house,” the private detective noted.
In 2017, Shaleta was appointed to lead the Chaldean Eparchy of Saint Peter the Apostle of San Diego.
The bishop relocated to San Diego in August 2017, and the woman “immediately moved to San Diego,” the detective’s report said.
Dudley documented that “Shaleta has unfettered access to the [woman’s] home” — entering regularly by using the garage door code, and visiting during the day several times each week.
In turn, the woman “has keys to [his] home… and has been observed using her keys to open the door.”
She had, the detective reported, “visited [Shaleta’s] home for a prolonged period of time on multiple occasions.”
The detective also noted that the bishop had also been observed “spend[ing] a great deal of time with [the woman’s] children,” often without the woman present.
“He has been observed and documented taking the children to his home, to a park, buying them food, playing with them at their home, allowing the children free reign in his car, and tossing them into the air. Often times, he has been observed taking only one child. This activity is much like what a parent would do,” Dudley wrote.
In sum, the investigator noted that Shaleta’s “life is full of questionable and suspicious behavior,” which “seem inappropriate for a person of his stature.”
In addition to the behavior included in the report, Chaldean sources told The Pillar that some of Shaleta’s other conduct has raised other concerns in the Chaldean community. Sources recounted that during a pilgrimage with laity, Shaleta told a group of pilgrims that he had learned as a seminarian to read palms, and indeed purported to read the future of one pilgrim by examining his palm.
Asked whether Shaleta was joking, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said the bishop was “perfectly serious.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that palm reading, as a form of divination, is to be “rejected,” and that it “contradict[s] the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.”
In 2018, Pope Francis called palm reading an “idolatry of our times.”
At the conclusion of the Vatican-ordered investigation, sources close to the case told The Pillar that Shaleta submitted his resignation at the request of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches.
However, while Shaleta told Chaldeans he’d resigned in January, a resignation has not been accepted by the Vatican, leading to confusion among Chaldean clergy in Iraq and among the close-knit Chaldean diaspora in the U.S., Europe, and Australia.
But sources close to the Chaldean Church’s patriarch in Iraq, Cardinal Louis Sako, told The Pillar that the cardinal had objected strongly to the Vatican request for Shaleta’s resignation and has been attempting to rally support for the bishop in Rome.
Sources close to the cardinal told The Pillar that Sako had a long-standing friendship with Shaleta, personally selected him for the San Diego post, and has relied on contributions from Shaleta’s eparchy to support the patriarchate’s ministry in Iraq.
According to several sources close to the patriarch, Sako has complained that the allegations regarding financial misconduct reflect an unfair distrust in the bishop, and American attitudes of “puritanism” regarding financial administration. The patriarch has reportedly dismissed the allegations of personal misconduct as an attempt to discredit the bishop.
Several sources close to the patriarch say that Sako has solicited letters of support for Shaleta from a group of Chaldean bishops, and has floated to other bishops the idea that if Shaleta cannot be retained in his San Diego post, he could be appointed secretary of the patriarchate, in Baghdad.
The cardinal did not answer questions emailed to him by The Pillar on Thursday.
However, Sako attempted to forward The Pillar’s questions to Shaleta, with instructions not to respond to media requests “at the moment.” But rather than successfully forward the email, Sako replied to The Pillar.
In a subsequent email, the cardinal confirmed that he had attempted to instruct Shaleta not to respond to questions “because there is an investigation.”
Sako did not respond to follow-up questions.
Meanwhile, sources say that Shaleta has also solicited priests of his eparchy to send to the Vatican letters attesting to his character, and has acted retributively toward local Catholics he believes to be whistleblowers.
Shaleta, 69, was ordained a priest in 1984, and after obtaining a doctorate in Biblical theology, he moved to the U.S. in 1987.
He became eparch of Canada’s Chaldean Catholics in 2015, and — amid a fractious leadership struggle in the Chaldean Church — was appointed eparch of the Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Saint Peter the Apostle of San Diego on August 9, 2017.
The eparchy is one of two Chaldean Catholic eparchies, or dioceses, in the United States. Its territory encompasses 19 western states.
The eparchy includes more than 70,000 Catholics, and roughly 20 priests.
The Chaldean Catholic Church is a sui iuris Eastern Catholic Church of more 600,000 members, almost all of whom are Iraqi, residing either in Iraq or in diaspora communities around the world.