PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic Philly
[Supreme Court opinion – via BishopAccountability.org]
[Dissenting opinion – via BishopAccountability.org]
BY MATTHEW GAMBINO
Free from prison and living under house arrest since a court ruling last December, Msgr. William Lynn’s freedom may be in jeopardy again.
The case of the former secretary for clergy of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the highest-ranking church official in the archdiocese convicted of a crime connected to the clergy sexual abuse crisis, took a dramatic new turn April 27 when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling that had released him on bail.
It remains unclear whether the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office will press to revoke Msgr. Lynn’s bail and return him to a Northeast Pennsylvania prison, pending appeals to yesterday’s ruling.
Msgr. Lynn, 64, had been convicted of endangering the welfare of a child in his landmark 2012 trial. In his position, he had supervised clergy on behalf of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua including former priest Edward Avery, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in 1999 and is serving a five-year prison sentence.
After Msgr. Lynn served 18 months of his three- to six-year sentence at Waymart State Prison, his conviction was overturned by the state Superior Court in December 2013. He subsequently took up residence with electronic monitoring at St. William’s rectory in Northeast Philadelphia.
Msgr. Lynn’s defense contended he should not be convicted retroactively according to a 2007 amendment to a 1995 child endangerment law when he was a supervisor until 2004.
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