Fallen Angel

The board revisited the issue once again in January 1998, then promptly moved forward. The church placed Stanley on the group insurance plan, and Morris resigned in protest. The Observer's attempts to contact Stanley for comment were unsuccessful.

In a letter addressed to Frey dated April 2003, executive director Upton admitted that he found several instances "in which it appears that the church provided health-insurance benefits to unpaid staff members," but that practice had been discontinued. One month later, however, he denied wrongdoing. In an article in the Dallas Voice that looked at the charges leveled at the church, Upton said that a church review of its insurance practices "revealed no irregularities."

Piazza also asked Ehrhardt to complete an employment verification form for a volunteer who sought a home loan and needed to show income. Morris provided the Observer with copies of faxed documents turned over to the denomination's investigators that show that Piazza and Ehrhardt filed an employment verification form on behalf of volunteer Michael Maher.

She says that Ehrhardt came to her in the spring of 1997 clearly distressed about being asked to provide employment verification on behalf of Maher. Against Morris' advice, Ehrhardt faxed the report to CTX Mortgage Co. in March 1997 indicating that Maher worked as a volunteer coordinator for $25,000 a year. Morris says Maher may have worked in that capacity, but he was not a paid employee. The application was rejected, however, because Maher didn't earn enough to qualify for the loan. That same day, Ehrhardt re-sent a fax with an amended salary of $30,000, the minimum amount required to make Maher eligible for the loan.

In the second fax, he also included a letter from Piazza dated January 24, 1997:

"Dear Mike, We are very pleased to offer you a permanent position as the Christian Caring Outreach Coordinator here at Cathedral of Hope, beginning March 3, 1997. Your yearly salary will be $30,000. The insurance plan we are presently offering you will continue to be paid by the Cathedral of Hope. Welcome to our staff!!"

The Observer was unable to reach Maher for comment.

Casting Bread Upon Water

The capital campaign was short on funds and long on internecine squabbles as board members and building team volunteers began to question the necessity of the building project and how funds were being spent.

Allegations of abuse, lies and fraud are leveled at the cathedral and its building project, which may explain why more than 65 employees have left their posts since the start of the campaign and the church is on its fourth executive director. Several former board members say that senior leaders conspired to deceive the congregation about the actual cost of the building project and how money earmarked for the new cathedral was squandered on fruitless fund-raising ventures.

"I don't know if the congregation as a whole had a clear understanding of how the capital campaign money was being spent," Harper says. "I continued to feel there was a deception being carried out." According to the Dallas Central Appraisal District, from the start of the capital campaign until the end of last year, Cathedral of Hope Inc. purchased nine properties for roughly $2.6 million. One warehouse building on Peeler Street was sold by the church last year for $1 million.

The properties were bought to make room for the Philip Johnson cathedral, a massive 35,000-square-foot building that would join the existing cathedral to the new one.

From the start, the price tag was closer to $35 million, but Piazza pushed his plan through at the expense of the congregation, former church leaders allege.

Originally billed as a $20 million project in 1996, the price tag has since soared to more than $40 million. In an interview with the Observer in 1999, Piazza was adamant that the project would break ground by 2000, though the church had managed to raise less than a third of the funds necessary. With a scant $8.5 million in the campaign coffers and a revised cost analysis, they are even further from reaching that goal today than they were four years ago.

Upton told the Voice in November 2003 that the project could take another six years to complete.

What is deceptive, a former executive director says, is that the revised $40 million figure alone is the cost of the construction and doesn't include land acquisition or any of the other smaller projects associated with the master plan.

"Minor construction was carried out to fool the congregation into thinking the project was on track," the former director says. "First the bell wall was built, so it was called Phase 1. Next the office buildings, called Phase 2. So it looks good. But the cathedral? They're never gonna see that cathedral built. Mike will have to answer to a higher authority in time."

Former members wonder how the church can justify continuing to lobby for a massive building project when it has not paid off loans on its current building and continues to fall short of its monthly operating expenses. In May, church balance sheets show, the operating budget was nearly $275,000 in the hole.

Harper says she left the church to which she had belonged for nearly 20 years because of unethical business practices made worse by the verbal abuse she suffered when she questioned those practices.