PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
“On the job training,” was what Msgr. William J. Lynn told the grand jury in 2004, describing the preparation he had to be the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s chief investigator of allegations about priests sexually molesting minors.
There was little direction from then Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua and only “rare” questions from the archbishop when he filed a report on a wayward priest, Lynn’s testimony reads.
That portrait of Lynn drawn from his grand jury testimony — an innocent, inexperienced priest thrust into a job that required the training of a lawyer, detective and psychologist — has been a mainstay of his defense in the landmark Common Pleas Court trial in which he accused of enabling pedophile priests to continue to prey on children.
City prosecutors today continued trying to undercut that portrait using documents from the church’s Secret Archives on abusive priests that were turned over to prosecutors in February on the eve of the trial.
A 2002 memo from Bishop Joseph Cistone to Lynn, introduced by Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington, refers to the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the church’s lobbying arm in Harrisburg, and its effort to prevent the legislature from extending the deadline for purported victims of sexual abuse by priests to file lawsuits against the church.
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