There is a certain kind of shock that comes from not the crime itself but from the person who did it. People were shocked when the Very Rev. Aidan Smith, who was dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Pittsburgh, was arrested outside of a Walmart in Economy Borough on February 27. It wasn’t just the accident that shocked them. It was the picture. An Episcopal priest, 42 years old, walked out of a big-box store with 27 packs of baseball cards hidden under his clothes and in a cardboard box.
Walmart security had already seen him and warned them. Court records show that this wasn’t just a bad afternoon of judgment; Smith had been entering and leaving the store without paying for four days in a row, as seen on video. By the time the police got there on Thursday, the stolen cards were worth about $1,100 all together. He was charged with stealing from a store and getting stolen goods.
Simple as the setting was, it’s hard not to notice it. It looks like the dean of a cathedral was stealing baseball cards from a Walmart on the edge of Pittsburgh between preaching on Sundays and visiting with pastors. There was no big heist. Not a complicated plan. Just a man walking past checkout lanes that he didn’t seem to want to use.
That being said, what happened after the Walmart incident made it feel like the first sentence of a much longer story.
As Smith turned in his resignation as dean in March, cathedral officials found something much scarier. A lot of things that belonged to the cathedral, like chalices, communion plates, and silver crosses, were for sale on eBay. Cathedral workers went to Smith’s house in Ambridge and found 91 things that were missing. They were told that some had already been bought and sold. That’s what communication director Andrew Muhl told KDKA-TV, adding that not everything could be found.
Most of the people in the Trinity congregation had respected Smith as a strong and dedicated leader. In a letter sent to people in the diocese after Smith was arrested, Bishop Ketlen Solak asked them to pray for him and his family, recognizing that the cathedral community was in a lot of pain. That letter has a mix of genuine pastoral care and the quiet pain of betrayal. It’s not accusatory, but it’s honest about how much had been lost.
Since then, Smith has pleaded guilty to the retail theft charge, which was changed from a felony to a general offense. He paid a $191 fine. The issue of the cathedral artifacts, on the other hand, is still open and much more serious. An internal investigation is being done by a disciplinary board made up of people from five Episcopal dioceses. There are many things that the board can do. In the event that Smith is discovered to have stolen and sold the artifacts, he may lose his priesthood and be charged with a crime. Smith hasn’t said anything to the public through his lawyer.
He can’t go into the cathedral, but he is still an Episcopal priest for now. Still, it’s not clear what caused any of this—the baseball cards, the sacred objects that were quietly put on eBay, or the weeks of small thefts that went on before anyone noticed. That question might never have a clear answer. It’s clear that the Pittsburgh Cathedral scandal, which began with stolen baseball cards, showed something much more valuable than silver crosses or communion plates: the trust that people have in the person leading the service.
