PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

by Joseph A. Slobodzian, Staff Writer

Msgr. William J. Lynn returned to a Philadelphia courtroom Thursday, four years older and a lot thinner than when he left to serve three to six years in prison for his conviction in the Catholic Church clergy sex abuse scandal.

Two Pennsylvania appeals courts have erased Lynn’s child endangerment conviction, although they are powerless to give back 33 months in prison.

But for the 65-year-old former secretary for clergy – the first Catholic Church official in the nation convicted for the way he supervised pedophile priests – freedom on $250,000 bail is the only clearing in a legal cloud that has shadowed him since 2002.

Still ahead, on May 1, is another public trial in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, on a charge of child endangerment, and the potential of another conviction and return to custody.

After Lynn was released Tuesday, defense…