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Defense lawyers for Philadelphia diocesan official, Monsignor William Lynn, claim Philadelphia Cardinal, the late Anthony Bevilacqua ordered the shredding of Lynn’s predator priests list and are asking for the case against Lynn to be dropped.
The lawyers contend that the real criminals are Bevilacqua and his advisors, and they are either dead or have not been charged in conjunction with this case.
Lynn, who’s accused of keeping predator priests in ministry and transferring them from parish to parish, wants his child endangerment case dismissed because of new evidence turned over by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, including his list of 35 accused priests.
Lynn took it upon himself to review secret church files after becoming secretary for clergy in 1992, and he later gave a list of accused, still-active priests to his superior, Monsignor James E. Molloy.
Bevilacqua had Molloy shred four copies of the predator priest list, according to a memo signed by Molloy and a witness. But Molloy kept a copy in a locked safe at the archdiocese, where it was found in 2006, after Lynn had moved on, according to his motion.
“It is clear from the Molloy memo, and (its) belated production, that Monsignor Lynn has been `hung out to dry,'” the defense motion says.
“Unbeknownst to anyone else and in violation of the cardinal’s directive, Monsignor Molloy preserved a copy of this list in a different place – a safe to which no one else had a combination,” the court documents said.
“The manner in which this memo was discovered is as shocking as its contents,” the court filing said.
“As this newfound memorandum proves, the District Attorney’s Office is entirely correct in its belief and assertion that an overarching Archdiocesan conspiracy existed in Philadelphia in the 1990s,” said the court documents filed by Lynn’s lawyers, who are paid by the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
“Its participants were Cardinal Bevilacqua, Bishop Cullen, Bishop Cistone and Monsignor Molloy,” the court papers said. “Appallingly, none of these individuals is on trial.”
Bevilacqua, who was to have been a witness at the trial, died on 31 January after suffering from dementia and cancer.
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