The champagne-soaked trail of the Pennsylvania preacher whose big-spending, hard-partying ways could get him booted out of the Episcopal clergy led him to Palm Beach.

With his face adorning the front page of newspapers in the Northeast right on time for the Christmas break, Father Gregory Malia, 43, fled his Wilkes-Barre home and secretly slid into town -– to continue the very shenanigans that got him in trouble.

Accompanied by a hot blonde –- his favorite waitress from the New York City club Aura –- Malia checked into the Brazilian Court on The Island, a boutique hotel where he spent $824 a night for a suite.

“He checked out Tuesday,” a source at the hotel said. “They were here for 10 days. Nice people.”

Malia and his squeeze surfaced at the West Palm nightclub Hotel Sunday, about 1 a.m. Staffers had to turn on the lights four hours later to nudge the last patron standing, Malia, out the door.

“He had a little church button on his collar,” said club promoter Josh Sagman. “He was very concerned that there’d be press photographers at the club.”

First, Sagman said, the man of the cloth ordered a magnum of Perrier Jouet rose for a mere $1,500. Since the waitresses were extra nice, he bought for their own consumption one smaller bottle of “P.J.” plus four bottles of Dom Perignon (the beverage named after a Benedictine monk), at 400 bucks a piece.

“He had the waitresses drink from the bottles and pour them on one another,” Sagman said.

The final bill came to $4,850, including house-imposed gratuities.

Wasn’t nearly enough. Malia gave another $2,000 to the staff.

How do they know the mystery spender was Malia?

“We asked for ID just to make sure we’d get paid,” Sagman said. “He produced a drivers license and a concealed weapons permit.”

Waitress Dao Nguien said Malia’s galpal introduced him to partiers in the VIP room as “Father Gregory.”

“I thought they were joking,” Nguien said. “I’d never have thought he’s a priest. He was sweet and funny, a true gentleman. He wasn’t dancing or anything. He was just hanging. He was more concerned with knowing more about our bouncer, Biggie.”

Through the holidays, the New York Daily News regaled the city with tales of this preacher painting Manhattan red. There were $10,000 nights in the city’s swankiest clubs. Pictures of Malia with club lovelies surfaced. And the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, Pa., started investigating.

Malia was expeditiously fired as vicar of his parish, and now faces being defrocked.

“What’s the big deal about this story?” wondered Malia’s public relations rep, Catherine Bolton. She said Malia has no vows of poverty or chastity to abide by. “He’s a private person and it’s his private life.

“Going to clubs is how he escapes. On one hand, we have high executives looking for bailouts. On the other, a simple man who likes to party. Why is the focus on this?”

Bolton declined to make the padre available for an interview Thursday, saying he was preparing to face church leaders.

Malia also owns a specialty blood-medicine supply company, New Life Home Care, from where he draws a salary. The company’s billing practices, however, have come under scrutiny from insurance companies.

As for St. James, the parish he was fired from? It reportedly has a yearly budget of $16,000 and services held only in summer because the church has no heat or running water.