PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

December 26, 2013

By Ben Finley, Allison Steele and Aubrey Whelen / Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — A state appeals court on Thursday reversed the conviction of Monsignor William J. Lynn, the former Archdiocese of Philadelphia administrator who became the first church official nationwide to be tried for covering up child sex abuse by priests.

In a 43-page opinion, a three-judge Superior Court panel wrote that prosecutors had misapplied Pennsylvania’s child endangerment law by claiming that Monsignor Lynn, as the archdiocese secretary for clergy, was responsible for abuse because he supervised a priest, Edward Avery, when Avery sexually abused an altar boy in the mid-1990s.

The court wrote that the law, as it was written during Monsignor Lynn’s tenure in the 1990s and early 2000s, only held accountable people who directly supervised children.

Monsignor Lynn, 62, has been serving a three- to six-year prison term since…