RKKnipsel: "It was all about the good of Mother Church"

Van Philly.com:

"After calling nearly 50 witnesses and presenting close to 1,900 documents over eight weeks, prosecutors rested their case Thursday in the landmark trial involving child sexabuse by Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests.

The team of district attorneys ended by letting jurors handle what they contend is the closest thing to a smoking gun in the case: a tattered gray folder that had been hidden away in a locked safe at archdiocesan offices for more than a decade.

Inside were handwritten and typed records, including a list that Msgr. William J. Lynn drafted in 1994 naming about three dozen priests who had admitted or were accused of sexual misconduct with minors, and other documents suggesting the church was girding against a possible wave of lawsuits.

Lynn and his codefendant, the Rev. James J. Brennan, scored one victory Thursday when Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove a conspiracy between the two men. She dismissed those counts.

But the judge left intact the more substantive charges: that Brennan tried to rape a 14-year-old boy in 1996, and that Lynn endangered children by letting Brennan and another priest, Edward Avery, have active roles in parishes in the 1990s despite knowing or suspecting they would abuse minors. (Avery has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy in 1999.)

In a preview of what could be a closing argument for the commonwealth, Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington told the judge that Lynn’s actions reflected a broader conspiracy within the church hierarchy.

“It was all about the good of Mother Church,” he said, after jurors had been released for the weekend. “They cared about money, they cared about the business of the church, not the flock and not the parishioners.”

The gray folder and the list within dominated the prosecution’s final week. Lynn had described the list to a grandjury investigating clergy sex abuse in 2004, but said he couldn’t find it.

It turned up this year in the archdiocese’s center city offices. Along with it, church lawyers turned over another handwritten memo stating that Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua had ordered all copies of the list shredded".

Wie denkt dat dit vandaag en in Nederland anders is, moet op dit weblog nog maar eens nalezen hoe de NL bisschoppenconferentie tegen mij als medegelovige een tuchtklacht indiende om willens en wetens mijn professionele integriteit ter discussie te stellen teneinde een doleante liegende plaatselijke collega-bisschop af te dekken, welke bisschop vervolgens door de paus tot kardinaal werd gebombardeerd terwijl Rome wist wat deze doleante, liegende bisschop had gedaan.