Probe Is Harsh on Catholic Leaders of Philadelphia

A three-year grand jury investigation of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, the longest known inquiry in the national clergy sex abuse crisis, ended Wednesday with scathing allegations that cardinals and other churchmen had conspired to protect offenders.

However, the grand jury said it could bring no indictments because of time limits on prosecuting the claims and because the Roman Catholic archdiocese is not a corporation under state law. Only one priest in the archdiocese has been indicted.

The archdiocese responded with its own sharply worded report, calling the grand jury’s conclusions discriminatory and sensationalized, and accusing investigators of bullying former Cardinal Joseph Bevilacqua during his 10 appearances as a witness.

The grand jury was unsparing in its condemnation of Bevilacqua, who retired in 2003, and his predecessor, the late Cardinal John Krol, who was archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988.

The two men knew that priests were molesting children but conducted bogus “non-investigations” designed to avoid uncovering abuse, while they and their aides transferred known abusers among parishes, the grand jury said.

The 418-page report names 63 priests “whose abusive behavior was well-documented in archdiocesan files and by witnesses who testified” before the panel. All had multiple victims, and many more abusers certainly exist, the grand jury said.

The examples of abuse cited in the report included an 11-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and impregnated by a priest, who took her for an abortion, and a priest who falsely told a 12-year-old boy that the child’s mother knew he was being raped repeatedly and allowed it.

“The evidence is clear. This reaches the top -- the very top of our archdiocese,” Philadelphia Dist. Atty. Lynne Abraham said at a news conference. “Regrettably, the perpetrators of these crimes and the people that protected them will never face the penalties they deserve.”

The archdiocese said in its rebuttal that the grand jury report was “a vile, mean-spirited diatribe” that was “reminiscent of the days of rampant Know-Nothingism in the 1840s” -- a time of strong anti-Catholic sentiment.

Abraham convened the grand jury in April 2002 amid the nationwide scandal following the disclosure of widespread abuse in the Boston Archdiocese. In the Philadelphia area, church officials have said that 44 priests had been “credibly” accused of sexual assaults since the 1950s. On Wednesday, the archdiocese said that the grand jury had concluded some claims church officials had considered questionable were, indeed, credible.

At least 11 grand juries nationwide have completed investigations of dioceses in the last three years. None resulted in criminal charges against bishops concerning their failures to rein in sexually abusive priests.