New Sex Abuse Scandal Continues to Explode in Philadelphia Archdiocese

Despite the disingenuous propaganda of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops and the Vatican that sexual predators had been removed from ministry and access to children and youths, the still expanding meltdown in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia tells a very different story. Indeed, little or nothing has really changed and the same old pattern of protecting child rapists and utter disregard for the safety of children and youths still is the norm. But this time someone in the hierarchy of the archdiocese has finally been arrested: Monsignor William Lynn, former secretary of the clergy and a top official in the archdiocese from 1992 to 2004. Lynn's crime? "Purposely" shielding dozens of abusive priests and endangering children in the late 1990s. The Roman Catholic Church can spend millions of dollars backing anti-gay legislative initiatives, but it can't clean its own cesspool like ranks. Here are highlights from the Philadelphia Inquirer:
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With his arrest Feb. 10, Lynn became the first Roman Catholic Church supervisor nationwide to be charged with covering up the sexual abuse of minors, authorities said. According to a scathing grand jury report, Lynn, as secretary of clergy for the archdiocese, concealed the crimes of accused priests and put them in positions in which they could harm more children.
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Victim advocates who rallied during the weekend said they were relieved by the charges against Lynn and cautious in their hope that more church leaders who had hidden abusers would be punished. I hope that this ripples across the country," said David Lorenz, director of the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. Lorenz said church leaders had allowed the priest who abused him, a counselor at his Catholic high school, to keep his post despite 50 previous abuse reports.
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Lynn, 60, has not been seen at the parish since his arrest on two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, which accuse him of ignoring complaints about three priests and a parochial schoolteacher who allegedly raped two altar boys in 1996 and 1998 at St. Jerome's Church in Northeast Philadelphia. The four were arrested with Lynn.
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It was the second time in less than six years that a grand jury castigated the archdiocese for its mishandling of sexual-abuse cases. The new grand jury report flatly stated that the current leadership under Rigali has not lived up to its promise to protect children by weeding out predatory clergy, keeping as many as 41 priests "in ministry despite solid, credible allegations of abuse."
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As the Washington Post noted:
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The rapist priests we accuse were well-known to the secretary of clergy, but he cloaked their conduct and put them in place to do it again," the [grand jury] report said.