BishopAccountability.org
	Egan Legacy Controversial By Daniel Tepfer The News-Times February 23, 2009 http://www.newstimes.com/ci_11768635 The way Cardinal Edward Egan handled allegations of sexual abuse by priests while he was bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport remains controversial in the Fairfield County diocese. His name still provokes anger among dozens of people who claim they were abused in their youth by Bridgeport diocesan priests. Church documents obtained by the Connecticut Post over a span of more than 10 years show Egan was made aware of specific allegations of abuse by priests when he became bishop here in 1988. However, not only did Egan not report the alleged abuse to police or other legal authorities, he covered up the allegations, moving offending priests around the diocese. The Bridgeport diocese paid nearly $40 million in settlements to dozens of people who claimed they were abused by more than a dozen priests in the diocese since the 1960s. Most of the settlements were reached days after Egan left the diocese in June 2000 to become archbishop of New York. "He really tried to prevent any effort to get at the heart of the sexual abuse matter," said Joseph O'Callaghan, a founder of the local branch of Voice of the People, an organization of Roman Catholics who advocate more lay participation in the church. "He set a pattern of preventing any of it (abuse complaints) from coming out." That view was challenged by James Stapleton, a lawyer for the diocese. "Almost everything that occurred occurred before Cardinal Egan came to Bridgeport," he said. "He was responsible for trying to resolve these matters and he started the process that we completed under Bishop Lori to the mutual satisfaction of the diocese and the claimants." But Cindy L. Robinson, a lawyer for the firm of Tremont & Sheldon, which represented many of the plaintiffs in the child-abuse cases against the Diocese of Bridgeport, said, "From the beginning, Cardinal Egan tried to distance himself from the clergy sex abuse scandal. I really don't feel that he ever addressed it." In one instance cited in church documents, Egan in 1989 assigned the Rev. Martin Federici, who according to church documents had been accused of abusing several children, to the former Cathedral High School in Bridgeport. Federici was moved to another post in the diocese after complaints were made that he abused a male student at the high school. In January 1993 the first lawsuit was filed against the diocese, claiming the Rev. Raymond Pcolka sexually abused two children in the early 1980s. At the time, diocesan officials adamantly denied they had ever previously received a complaint of abuse involving Pcolka. But court documents later showed the diocese had been in negotiations since 1989 with a lawyer representing people who claimed Pcolka abused them when they were children. A total of 16 people would later claim he abused them in the early 1980s at parishes in Bridgeport and Stratford. The diocese did not suspend the priest until March 1993. In October 2003, Bishop William E. Lori, who succeeded Egan as the bishop of Bridgeport in 2000, publicly apologized to those abused by priests in the diocese. The closest Egan ever came to making an apology was in an April 2002 letter to parishioners at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. "It is clear that today we have a much better understanding of this problem," Egan wrote. "If in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards to prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry."
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