Allentown Bishop at Meeting Where Cardinal Ordered Sex Abuse Memo Shredded

The Express-Times
February 25, 2012

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/allentown/index.ssf/2012/02/post_72.html

Edward Cullen

Bishop Edward P. Cullen was in on a 1994 meeting in which
Bevilacqua_ordered_shredding_of_memo_identifying_suspected_abusers.html">Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua ordered a list of 35 problem priests destroyed, according to a court filing.

Cullen, who served as bishop of the Diocese of Allentown from 1998 to 2009 and still lives in the Allentown area, had previously served as top aide under Bevilacqua.

Matt Kerr, a spokesman for the Allentown diocese, referred requests for comment to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

In Philadelphia, Monsignor William Lynn is facing trial in a priest-abuse scandal; jury selection is under way. Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged for allegedly keeping predator-priests in ministry.

Lynn asked Friday to have his conspiracy and child-endangerment case thrown out based on new evidence of the list, which Lynn contends corroborates his claims that efforts to conceal clergy sex abuse were orchestrated at levels above him.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Lynn's filing claims Bevilacqua discussed the memo in a March 15, 1994, meeting with Monsignor James Molloy, the assistant vicar for administration, and Cullen, who was then the cardinal's top aide.

After the meeting, Bevilacqua allegedly ordered Molloy to shred the memo, which Lynn had produced.

Lynn in 1992 began combing the secret personnel files of hundreds of priests to gauge the scope of misconduct involving children, the Inquirer reported based on the court filing. He did it, his lawyers said, because he "felt it was the right thing to do," the newspaper reported.

Bevilacqua, who died last month, was never charged in the clergy sex-abuse scandal.

Cullen, who also was never charged, testified before a Philadelphia grand jury in 2005 that Bevilacqua was insistent in all cases that parishioners not be told the truth about abusive priests.