SPOKANE (WA)
The Spokesman-Review [Spokane WA]
October 12, 2025
By Alexandra Duggan
The Catholic Diocese of Spokane removed a priest from ministry and asked police to investigate after he was accused of misappropriation of funds and sexual misconduct involving six women.
Catholic clergy across Spokane received a notice in April that Our Lady of Fatima’s priest, the Rev. Miguel Mejia, was accused of seeking sex from “vulnerable” women in exchange for money or other items, using parish funds to pay for sexual activities with women, stalking a woman at least once and using his power and status as a priest to harm them.
“This is wrong,” said the Rev. Darrin Connall, vicar general for the diocese, in an interview. “And it’s tragic.”
Many of Mejia’s former parishioners, including the church’s bookkeeper, continue to support the priest and question the veracity of the evidence against him.
Parishioners and priests all gathered at a meeting in June, according to a transcript and recording obtained by The Spokesman-Review. They were told Mejia would likely not be returning to the church, located on the South Hill at Perry Street and 34th Avenue.
The Diocesan Review Board, made up of a majority of people not employed by the diocese, decided the allegations were credible. That followed interviews of two of the women by the Victim Assistance Ministry Office and a separate investigation by a retired police detective that Spokane Bishop Thomas Daly appointed for assistance. The board recommended to Daly that Mejia be removed, and Daly accepted the recommendation.
The retired detective found three additional women with allegations, the board said at the meeting. Some are parishioners at the church, some are not, and one is reportedly in prison. The women were able to identify and describe a specific part of Mejia’s body only known through intimate contact.
“These women have our sincere respect and our gratitude for this chance to do justice for them and for the chance to protect others from probable harm in the future,” a board member said at the meeting.
The first two called the Victim Assistance Ministry Office in March, the board told parishioners in June. The Spokesman-Review generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual misconduct.
“The first injury that the victims suffered is that a man they respected, that they trusted, that they went to when they were vulnerable, damaged their ability to trust their own experience,” a different board member said. “Grooming is a gradual erosion of one’s ability to perceive the truth, to perceive reality, so over time, these women lost their ability to trust their own experience.”
Mejia entered seminary in Mexico as a high school student, according to local religious publication the Fig Tree. He later traveled from Mexico to Walla Walla, studied English at a local community college, moved to Spokane to continue his education and was ordained by the Spokane Diocese in 2000. He has served at Our Lady of Fatima since and also ministers to people who are incarcerated.
“He is and was beloved,” Connall said. “People thought he walked on water.”
Mejia’s attorney Christian Phelps declined to comment on behalf of his client.
Daly also did not respond to a request for comment.
The detective hired by Daly suggested the Our Lady of Fatima parish conduct a financial audit after suspecting Mejia was using church funds to pay the women and attempting to write it off as another expense.
Connall said, in one instance, Mejia is alleged to have paid for a pack of women’s multicolored thong underwear and turned in the receipt to the bookkeeper as a “sacristy supply” expense, or sacred items used during mass. He said this alleged act was not an accident.
The diocese hired Eide Bailly, an accounting firm with which the church has worked before, to conduct the audit. This time, Connall said, they chose investigators from the firm’s location in South Dakota instead of Spokane to remove any potential bias.
During the firm’s initial evaluation, they discovered “various control weaknesses” within the finance operations of the church, the firm said in a letter read during the meeting. Mejia refused an interview with the firm regarding his spending habits, Connall added.
Daly said during the June meeting that he flew to meet Mejia in Seattle. Mejia initially denied the allegations, but later stopped responding at all. Daly said there was a point during the meeting where Mejia stopped looking at Daly in the face and instead would grow quiet and stare at his knees.
Connall said the diocese is awaiting completion of the formal Spokane Police Department investigation.
Should the police investigation recommend criminal charges be brought against Mejia, the priest would be arrested and the case would be handled by the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office.
If police determine crimes were not committed, Connall said it’s likely the case would still be submitted to the Holy See to determine whether the church should take further action. The Holy See is the main governing body overseeing the Vatican, which practices Canon Law, a legal system that regulates the Catholic Church.
Even if police find no evidence of a crime, Mejia could still be removed for the allegations he engaged in other consensual sexual activities. Under Canon Law, Catholic priests take a vow of celibacy.
The bishop also retained an expert from the School of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America to ensure Mejia’s Canon rights would not be violated during the investigatory process. He still is receiving benefits and salary from the church, even though he was pulled from ministry. He was also offered a priest advocate to help him through the process but turned it down, Daly said at the meeting.
At the meeting, Daly and the board continued to maintain that the allegations against Mejia were credible and that they believe the women who came forward.
One board member mentioned the likelihood that some parishioners may not believe the women because Mejia is a trusted man of faith and power. Some victims never report out of shame or embarrassment, the board member said.
While some parishioners acknowledge that may be true, they also think there is more to the story.
Heather O’Keefe, the bookkeeper at Our Lady of Fatima, is one of many who have their reservations about the allegations made against her priest – in part because she saw most of the receipts and transactions made by Mejia herself. She and a group of parishioners have banded together to pay for Mejia’s attorney.
“Father never hid any expense. He was totally transparent,” O’Keefe said. “If he was committing this big fraud and using church money for illicit purposes, why would he have submitted the underlying receipts?”
O’Keefe said financial fraud and possible paperwork issues were already an issue raised back in 2018. Mejia was accused of misusing church finances and stealing, but nothing came of it following an audit.
When O’Keefe heard the news about the sexual misconduct allegations against Mejia this year, she was originally shaken, she told The Spokesman-Review in an interview.
“You hear this … and you’re trying to reconcile in your mind the person you’ve known for 10 years with what they’re saying,” O’Keefe said. “Your head is spinning.”
During the June meeting, O’Keefe and other parishioners were upset with the bishop bringing these allegations to them without more evidence.
Some questioned why the bishop was even discussing it without a criminal trial or more investigation. One person insinuated that Mejia refusing to meet with the firm or refusing to answer Daly’s questions weren’t admissions of guilt. Another accused Daly of not doing more to ensure Mejia was treated fairly. O’Keefe also stood up and told the bishop that these allegations didn’t sit well with her because she felt, as the bookkeeper, she was being unfairly implicated.
O’Keefe agreed to be interviewed by the retired detective Daly hired, although she felt the whole interview was “sloppy” enough that it raised her own questions.
She was asked about a check for thousands of dollars that was written out of their social ministry account, which raised flags to others, but not to O’Keefe. Mejia was purchasing a car for someone in need with money he received from a donation, as he often did to help others, O’Keefe said. The church has designated charity expenses for those types of needs.
O’Keefe recalled asking Mejia about the purchases, which she later approved. The car was given to a woman who later accused Mejia of sexual misconduct, O’Keefe said.
“When someone has financial difficulty, they might come to Father to ask for help,” O’Keefe said. “And he would provide that financial assistance because we had the money.”
O’Keefe believes there was no possibility that Mejia could have bought women cars or other goods in exchange for sex, and there was no reason to believe he would do it under her watch.
There “was always evidence of what we were paying for,” she said.
O’Keefe claims Mejia bought the women’s thong underwear for a homeless woman in need. Because Mejia had more than 50 purchases a month and often took a month to let the financial council know the purpose for each purchase, it isn’t surprising to O’Keefe that he potentially “forgot what he had purchased” and assigned the wrong “code” to the underwear.
Rather than the intended “code” – a poor and needy expense – the underwear was assigned as sacristy supplies. O’Keefe said she told the auditor in an interview filing the necessary paperwork wasn’t one of Mejia’s strengths.
O’Keefe said she personally knows three of the women who have accused Mejia of sexual misconduct, and some of them know each other. According to O’Keefe, some alleged victims had told the bishop’s office to talk to some of their friends about their experiences with Mejia, which doesn’t sit well with her, either.
“In 10 years, there is not a flicker, not an innuendo of anything about him,” she said.
Another parishioner standing behind Mejia is Steve Blewett, who has attended Our Lady of Fatima for 50 years. He, O’Keefe and four others are part of the group that have questioned the allegations against Mejia. Blewett also rose during the June meeting to question Daly.
“Our purpose is to try to get to the truth of these allegations. If the women’s accounts are valid, they deserve to be treated with respect and get justice,” Blewett told The Spokesman-Review. “And Father Miguel also deserves to be treated with respect and the normal procedures of an investigation.”
Blewett would estimate around 90% of church members are supportive of Mejia or want more information about the accusations because of the way they responded to Daly’s speech, he said. He believes the issues were presented in a way to make them look incriminating, but they would look “absolutely normal” in a different context.
O’Keefe and Blewett also voiced reservations of Daly, who was appointed as the Spokane bishop in 2015. He tends to be more traditional, O’Keefe said, and the bishop’s views have received some pushback within their parish.
Some Our Lady of Fatima employees were replaced, including a music teacher, with staff from the Chesterton Academy of Notre Dame this year, Connall acknowledged. Daly sits on the board of the Chesterton Academy, according to a Facebook post from the Catholic Diocese of Spokane.
Some parishioners’ disdain for Daly’s more traditional tendencies has eroded their trust in him to oversee the investigation into Mejia.
Most in the June meeting indicated that they want more evidence presented , but it likely won’t be permitted because of the ongoing criminal investigation.
Connall said in a phone interview there was little he could say about the situation that wasn’t already made available to the parishioners without compromising the integrity of the police investigation.
“You have to look at the totality of all of it,” O’Keefe said. “That’s what we want Spokane police to do, is just look at the totality of the investigation.”
For Connall, the Catholic Church has a duty to treat victims fairly when allegations of sexual misconduct arise. The long history of child sex abuse within the church – including the Spokane Diocese agreeing to pay $48 million to people molested by priests as part of a bankruptcy deal two decades ago – is why the diocese is making such a strong effort to take immediate action now. The board and the victim ministry are in regular contact with the women, he said.
“To come forward with this … it took a lot of guts on their part,” Connall said. “I think it’s shameful to question their authenticity or their character.”
More accusations like this are discouraging for other priests, Connall said.
He wants people to trust priests.
Connall also feels the speculation defending Mejia is making the investigation more complicated than it needs to be. And he’s worried that the love for Mejia might be clouding judgment regarding his alleged behavior.
It doesn’t matter whether the alleged victims know each other, though, Connall said. He believes cherry-picking the women’s lives, their past and with whom they speak within the church, a close-knit community, is a reason why some women do not come forward at all.
“We believe he engaged in sexual misconduct,” Connall said. “As God is my witness, we want the truth, for the sake of the people of God … This is discouraging to me, as a priest.”
Alexandra Duggan alexandrad@spokesman.com(509) 459-5469