Coroner: Philly Cardinal Died of Natural Causes

By Patrick Walters
Associated Press
March 8, 2012

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A suburban Philadelphia coroner said Thursday that 88-year-old Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua died of natural causes a day after he had been ruled competent to testify at the child-endangerment trial of a longtime aide.

Officials had said Bevilacqua, who served as archbishop from 1988 to 2003, was suffering from dementia and cancer. But last month, prosecutors asked the coroner to investigate because of the timing of his death.

Bevilacqua, spiritual leader of the archdiocese's 1.5 million Roman Catholics from 1988 to 2003, died Jan. 31 at a seminary and was laid to rest without an autopsy. He was suffering from dementia and cancer, according to church officials and his lawyers, and his death was widely assumed to be from natural causes.

Montgomery County Coroner Walter Hofman said at a news conference Thursday that Bevilacqua had suffered from heart disease and prostate cancer and that his examination found that Bevilacqua's dementia was "fairly advanced."

Hofman said there was no relation between the judge's ruling and Bevilacqua's sudden death.

"These things do occur," he told reporters.

Just before Bevilacqua died, a Philadelphia judge ruled him competent to testify at the child endangerment trial of Monsignor William Lynn, who is accused of quietly shuffling priests suspected of molesting children to unwitting parishes while he was a high-ranking archdiocesan official from 1992 to 2004.

In a grand jury report on the case last year, prosecutors accused Bevilacqua himself of presiding over the alleged cover-up of sexual abuse by priests. But he was not charged with a crime.