PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog
Ralph Cipriano
It was billed as the prosecution’s smoking gun — a worn gray folder of documents passed out to the jury, just before the prosecution rested its case.
Inside the folder were several typed and handwritten documents compiled by Monsignor William J. Lynn that were ordered shredded by Cardinal Bevilacqua in 1994, but 18 years later, those documents mysteriously reappeared in a locked safe at archdiocese headquarters.
The most famous document in the folder was the list of 35 then-active priests compiled by Lynn who had been either convicted or accused of sexual abuse of minors. The smoking gun was supposed to be proof of a conspiracy to protect the Catholic Church and keep its shameful sexual abuse of children hidden at all costs.
But last week, as the defense presented its case, the smoking gun took on another meaning. The way the defense spun it, that worn gray folder was proof that Msgr. Lynn had done his best to expose sexually abusive priests in the ministry, and put his bosses on notice about all of them. The story of how Lynn’s superiors handled those documents, as well as their author, was proof that the monsignor was out of the real power loop in the archdiocese.
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