Priest sentenced to prison for drug, gun charges

RIVERSIDE -- A Riverside County pastor convicted of selling methamphetamine and keeping a stolen pistol was sentenced today to two years in state prison.

Anthony Garduno, 51, pleaded guilty to four felonies and a misdemeanor in January in Riverside Superior Court. Judge Gordon R. Burkhart sentenced him today.

Garduno came under suspicion in December when former a former parishioner at Garduno's Home Gardens church accused the priest of sexual assault.

When Riverside County sheriff's deputies obtained a warrant on the basis of the sex allegations and searched the church, they discovered the drugs and the pistol.

The priest was shot several times in an armed robbery at his church in September. Five men accused in the incident are awaiting trial for attempted murder and other charges.

Garduno is a self-identified bishop in the Old Catholic Church, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1870s.