Jan 25, 2019 4 min read

Rosendo Francis Dacal spent several years as a chaplain ministering to inmates at the Allegheny County Jail.

On Thursday, he was in Washington County Court trying to avoid incarceration.

Dacal, 74, who goes by the nickname Ross, pleaded guilty in October to two felonies – criminal solicitation of sexual abuse of children and criminal use of a communication device – but left the penalty up to Judge Gary Gilman.

He was arrested at his North Hills home on child pornography charges last April by North Strabane Township police after Officer Gary Scherer, who is a member of the Pennsylvania Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, had been monitoring a chatroom.

Scherer had assumed the decoy persona of a 14-year-old boy when he was contacted by someone with the username “chubby boy” in December 2017.

The user, later identified as Dacal, sent sexually explicit messages, sought nude photos of whom he thought was the 14-year-old and exposed himself during video sessions over the course of several months.

Assistant District Attorney Heather Serrano advocated for a sentence of nine to 16 months in jail for Dacal, but in an hour-long court proceeding, Dacal, his attorney Robert DelGreco, and witnesses on Dacal’s behalf asked Gilman for leniency.

DelGreco emphasized Dacal had not participated in physical contact with a youth, but that he accepted responsibility for his activity online. Dacal is no longer living at the home he shared with his wife of 45 years, but has moved to an apartment and is engaging in prayer, fasting, spiritual reflection plus counseling by a psychoanalyst and psychologist.

He called Dacal’s criminal conduct “enigmatic, inexplicable and irreconcilable.”

As a youth, Dacal left Cuba after the Communist revolution and lived in a refugee camp stateside, eventually earning postgraduate degrees in business and law. As a Catholic deacon, he volunteered as a chaplain at the Allegheny County Jail, where he taught Bible studies, according to a former inmate, Michael Colucci, 58, of Cleveland, Ohio.

Colucci, who made the trip to speak on Dacal’s behalf, had been jailed for robbery but said his mentor “had a profound influence on my life. Up until that time, I struggled with drug addiction and criminal thinking.”

Dacal, he said, offered him a regimen of prayer and fasting that turned around his life, kept in touch with him after his release, and he now has a successful construction company.

Mark DeAndrea, retired director of corporate sales for the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team, called Dacal “a gift from God” and “a blessing to many.”

Holding a single, handwritten sheet, Dacal poured out his life story to the judge, beginning with his orphaned childhood, recounting his studies in Europe and his career as an opera singer. He said he learned years after counseling a young man in Europe that he rescued the youth from the brink of suicide.

Dacal became a deacon, a volunteer position, in 2011, and he called his foray into an online chatroom “a great mistake” for which he has paid dearly. After his arrest, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh placed Dacal on administrative leave and suspended him from active ministry.

After considering the testimony, the defendant’s age and a presentence investigation by probation officer John Pankopf, Gilman placed Dacal on probation for two years, ordered him to perform 100 hours of community service each year, and placed him on a sex offenders’ registry for 25 years. He ordered that Dacal have no access to a computer or smartphone, but that he continue with therapy.

The judge said an entire life should not be judged by one’s last act.

At the time of Dacal’s arrest, Bishop David Zubik called the charges “disturbing” and said the diocese had no previous knowledge of the acts with which Dacal was charged.

The Rev. Nick Vaskov, spokesman for the diocese, reached after court had been adjourned, said Dacal remains on administrative leave, which means he cannot function as a deacon.

Under church law, the next step will be to review Dacal’s status by a canonical process which would ultimately be decided at the Vatican. Removal of a deacon is known as “laicization,” or reduction to the status of a lay person.