PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

February 1, 2021

By Julian Routh and Peter Smith

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar will soon resign after her department failed to advertise an amendment to the state’s constitution extending the statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims to file actions in civil court against their abusers, Gov. Tom Wolf announced Monday.

Her resignation will take effect on Friday, Mr. Wolf said.

The omission is a stunning setback in an effort by victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and others to gain a window of time in which they could sue over abuse that happened years or decades ago, beyond what the current statute of limitations allows.

The effort, building on grand jury reports in 2016 and 2018 on the long histories of abuse in Catholic dioceses around the state, would have enabled victims to sue dioceses or others deemed complicit in the…