UNITED STATES
Wicked Local Newton
Marjorie Arons-Barron
Recently, a Philadelphia church official, Msgr. William Lynn, was sentenced to three to six years in prison on one felony child endangerment charge for covering up sexual abuse by the now laicized priest, Edward Avery, whom he supervised. Lynn was acquitted of conspiracy and a second endangerment count involving a second priest, on whom the jury deadlocked. The concern underlying the charges and conviction was Lynn’s apparent shielding of predatory priests, protecting them from public scrutiny by reassigning them to different parishes, and lying to spare the Church’s reputation from scandal. He had a responsibility in those three areas under both secular and canon law. Msgr. Lynn mounted a defense saying he was obeying orders from his own supervisor, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, Archbishop of Philadelphia and a canonist, who died earlier this year. Meanwhile, Cardinal Bevilacqua’s successor, Cardinal Justin Regali, failed to provide material relevant to the scandal to his own review board.
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