PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Associated Press
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua died just weeks before his longtime aide went on trial in the alleged cover-up of sexual assaults by priests within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Yet Bevilacqua is very much the ghost inside Courtroom 304 at the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center. Rarely an hour goes by that his name is not invoked.
Witnesses portray him as a regal, sometimes feared authoritarian figure: “the man at the top,” in the words of city detective Joseph Walsh.
After eight weeks of evidence, prosecutors trying to convict Monsignor William Lynn of child endangerment rested Thursday without showing the videotaped deposition Bevilacqua gave two months before his Jan. 31 death. He was 88, and battling cancer and dementia. And he claimed to remember few details of the scores of abuse complaints that came in under his watch, according to a defense motion.
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