PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Prosecutors today began dissecting the career of the Rev. Nicholas V. Cudemo — transferred among Archdiocesan high schools over more than two decades after being accused of molesting a series of teenage girls — as the trial continued to explore the church’s handling of allegations of sexual abuse by some priests.
“As a male celibate, he needs female companionship and friendship,” Archdiocesan officials reported Cudemo told them when confronted in October , 1991 about allegations by several cousins that the priest had fondled them during their teen and preteen years.
That statement and others were contained in church archives that were read to the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury hearing the case against Msgr. William J. Lynn, who as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004 was the designated investigator of complaints of sexual misconduct against priests.
Most of Cudemo’s predations against teenage girls occurred before Lynn’s tenure as secretary for clergy. Cudemo was ordained in 1963 and the first allegation against him — involving a junior at Lansdale Catholic High School — was in 1966 at his first post as assistant pastor at St. Stanislaus parish in the Montgomery County community. Now 75, Cudemo was defrocked in 2005.
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