PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By John P. Martin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A defense lawyer on Thursday urged jurors to acquit Msgr. William J. Lynn, arguing he is being unfairly held to pay for the sins of the Catholic church covering up child-sex abuse by priests.
“You have witnessed evil in this courtroom. You have seen the dark side of the church and you have seen grown men come into this courtroom and weep because they were abused,” lawyer Thomas Bergstrom told the jury during the first closing statement of the landmark trial. “If we cannot feel their pain, then we are broken.”
Lynn also felt the pain, Bergstrom said, but he did not cause it nor should he be held to pay for it. The lawyer accused prosecutors of mounting a flawed and misguided case against Lynn, the former secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Bergstrom said Lynn was the one church official who tried hard to identify and remove sexually abusive priests, and he cited as proof a pillar of the prosecution: the hundreds of meticulous and previously secret church records, many drafted or reviewed by Lynn, that cataloged complaints and actions against abusive priests across the Philadelphia region.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.