Anthony Pilla, who served as Bishop of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese from 1980 until 2006, died Tuesday morning at his home. He was 88.

Pilla was born in Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood and graduated from John Carroll University. His tenure as Cleveland’s Bishop, which began when his predecessor James Hickey was named Archbishop of Washington, spanned the mayoralties of George Voinovich, Michael R. White and Jane Campbell in Cleveland. He resigned in 2006 after open-bypass heart surgery and the cumulative stress and grief of the national sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.

Though Pilla eventually established a lay review board and procedures for the reporting of abuse and the removal of abusive priests, those actions came only after years of diocesan neglect in Northeast Ohio. The vast scale of the abuse, and the pain and distrust it created in millions of Catholics, didn’t seem to dawn on Pilla until…