PITTSBURGH (PA)
Trib Live
September 7, 2018
By Megan Guza
One of two civil lawsuits filed Friday against the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh accuses former Bishop Anthony Bevilacqua of sexually assaulting a young girl more than three decades ago.
That lawsuit, filed on behalf of a 45-year-old woman now living in San Diego, alleged that Bevilacqua and two other clergy, the Revs. Lawrence O’Connell and Edward Huff, assaulted her between 1978 and 1985 when she was between the ages of 5 and 13.
Pittsburgh attorney Alan Perer filed the lawsuit, along with a second lawsuit, against the diocese, Bishop David Zubik and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who served as Pittsburgh diocese’s bishop before Zubik.
Bevilacqua served as Pittsburgh’s bishop from 1983 and 1987. He became archbishop of Philadelphia in 1988, was elevated to cardinal in 1991 and retired in 2003. He died in 2012 at 87. He was accused in a 2011 grand jury report of transferring problem priests out of Philadelphia parishes to new ones without warning anyone of prior sexual abuse complaints.
The alleged victim in the first lawsuit and her family met O’Connell at St. Gabriel’s Church and St. Gabriel’s Sorrowful Mother School in Whitehall, where he was a pastor from 1952 to 1983, according to the lawsuit. She alleged that O’Connell began to fondle her through her school uniform when she was between 5 and 7.
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