CARDINAL BEVILACQUA AND THE PHILADELPHIA COVER-UP

National Catholic Reporter
October 7, 2005

Grand jury findings: Philadelphia cardinals 'excused and enabled abuse, covered up crimes'
By RALPH CIPRIANO

A grand jury that investigated the Philadelphia archdiocese for more than three years has concluded that two former archbishops orchestrated a systematic cover-up spanning four decades that managed to successfully shield from prosecution 63 priests who had sexually abused hundreds of children.

In a 418-page report issued Sept. 21, the grand jury said that the two archbishops -- the retired Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and the late Cardinal John Krol -- “excused and enabled the abuse” by “burying the reports they did receive and covering up the conduct ... to outlast any statutes of limitation.”

The Philadelphia grand jury used blunt language to describe the sex abuse uncovered during the investigation, which they said was often recorded by the archdiocese in more than 45,000 pages of documents from secret archdiocese archives with such “delicate euphemisms” as “inappropriate touching.”

“We mean rape,” the grand jury report said. “Boys who were raped orally, boys who were raped anally, girls who were raped vaginally.”

The church records, once kept under lock and key in a room at archdiocesean headquarters accessible only to the archbishop, the secretary for clergy and their aides, contained accusations of “countless acts of sexual depravity against children.” The cases involved a total of 169 priests and hundreds of alleged child victims. The records were turned over to Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham after multiple subpoenas were served on officials at the archdiocese. The grand jury chose to investigate the acts of 63 priests in their report.

The grand jury said its findings might be interpreted by some as a tragedy, such as a tidal wave. But the report said that tidal waves are “beyond human control,” and added, “What we found were not acts of God, but of men who acted in his name and defiled it.”

The report noted the behavior of archdiocesan officials who oversaw the priests was “not as lurid” as that of the sex abusers, “but in its callous calculating manner, the archdiocese’s handling of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself.”

“What makes these allegations all the worse, the grand jurors believe, is that the abuses that Cardinal Bevilacqua and his aides allowed children to suffer -- the molestations, the rapes, the lifelong shame and despair ... were made possible by purposeful decisions, carefully implemented policies, and calculated indifference,” the report said.

“The evidence before us established that archdiocese officials at the highest levels received reports of abuse,” the report said. The diocese, according to report, “chose not to conduct any meaningful investigation of those reports” and “left dangerous priests in place or transferred them to different parishes as a means of concealment. ... They chose to protect themselves from scandal and liability rather than protect children from the priests’ crimes.”

[To read the rest of this disturbing article, click here.]
_______________

mp