PENNSYLVANIA
The PittsburghChannel.com
POSTED: 4:35 pm EDT September 22, 2005
UPDATED: 6:31 pm EDT September 22, 2005
ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. -- The following report by Team 4 investigative reporter Paul van Osdol first aired Sept. 22, 2005, on Channel 4 Action News at 6 p.m.
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Decades of sexual abuse by priests kept secret? Pittsburgh authorities are reviewing a report accusing the Philadelphia archdiocese of doing just that.
Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua spent five years as the Pittsburgh bishop before going to Philadelphia. Now, he is the focus of a grand jury investigation.
The grand jury said when Bevilacqua was bishop in Pittsburgh, he allowed the Rev. John P. Connor to transfer to Pittsburgh, even though he knew the priest had been arrested in New Jersey after being accused of molesting a young boy.
When Bevilacqua moved to Philadelphia, he found a parish for Connor there.
The grand jury report said Bevilacqua was doing a favor for a friend -- the bishop of Camden, N.J. -- when he allowed Connor to transfer to Pittsburgh.
But in a memo, Bevilacqua's assistant, the Rev. Nicholas Dattilo, warned about the transfer. "If the problem is homosexuality or pedophilia, we could be accepting a difficulty with which we have had no post-therapeutic experience," wrote Dattilo.
Posted by kshaw at September 22, 2005 06:49 PM