Where is cardinal bevilacqua

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Her class was preparing for confirmation, the third, and final, sacrament of initiation in the Catholic church, and the bishop was going to speak to her class, to welcome them into the faith. Heather was just a teenager at the time. Her family was devoutly Catholic. Family life revolved around the church. Her father, a vice president at PNC Bank, was a respected, and valued, patron of the church, often tithing far above what was expected. Initiation into the Catholic faith was a rite of passage, something that was expected, and anticipated, and Heather was looking forward to it, even though she was harboring a secret that she dared not tell anyone.

On a couple of occasions, she was molested by priests at the school, according to a lawsuit she filed recently in Allegheny County. More: Adult, Catholic school kindergartner behind class action lawsuit against 8 dioceses. The students gathered in the cafeteria, and the bishop made some remarks. He had his picture taken with the class. Then, she was escorted into a nearby room for a private audience with the bishop.

There, she said, under the guise of adjusting her school uniform, a plaid jumper, he groped her. The bishop was Anthony Bevilacqua, she said, a man who would, one day, attain the title of cardinal. He wasn't listed among the priests accused of sexually abusing children in the recently released Pennsylvania grand jury report. Previously, he had faced accusations that he participated in the cover-up of sexual abuse by priests.

Perer, who practices law in Pittsburgh, has been involved in litigation involving the Catholic church for 15 years. In , he filed civil suits against the church on behalf of 33 clients, and none of them mentioned Bevilacqua as a suspected abuser. Both priests were named in the grand jury report on the clergy sexual abuse scandal released last month. Gabriel from to , was accused of sexually abusing a pre-teen girl once a week in his office over the course of a year and touching and kissing four other young girls.

He had been the subject of three lawsuits filed by abuse victims in , suits that were settled in under undisclosed terms. He has since passed away. More: Clergy sex abuse survivor files 'unique' defamation lawsuit against the Catholic church.

According to the grand jury report released last month, a handwritten note in Huff's file said he "admitted to touching kids and targeting at least 1, The report found that the Diocese of Pittsburgh, along with the five others across the state, showed a pattern of hiding child sexual abuse over seven decades to protect the reputation of the Catholic Church.

In Pittsburgh alone, the report identified 99 abusive priests. Taylor's lawsuit was one of three filed Friday citing the report. There remains a question of whether these new lawsuits — and others like them — can move forward successfully, since all of the allegations are past the statute of limitations for a civil action.

Skip to content Share Icon. Facebook Logo. Link Icon. Former Cardinal Bevilacqua named in new clergy abuse lawsuit against Pittsburgh diocese. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood. After retiring in , he left the cardinal's residence on City Avenue for the apartment at the seminary and rarely appeared in public.

Cardinal Bevilacqua was emblematic of the church to which he had devoted himself since age progressive on some social-justice issues, staunchly orthodox on matters of doctrine and sexuality, and unfailingly deferential to the will of Rome.

He was a private man, given to dining alone at the mansion. Yet he delighted in public appearances and was known for his personal touch with the faithful.

He paid official daylong visits to all parishes in the five-county archdiocese, typically saying Mass, touring schools, visiting nursing homes, and posing for photos.

He sometimes flung his zucchetto, or skullcap, Frisbee-style into a crowd, and planted his bishop's hat on youngsters' heads. Perhaps the most joyous moment of his prelature here came Oct. Cardinal Bevilacqua had vigorously championed her cause. He was among the hundreds of Philadelphians clutching umbrellas in Rome that rainy day as John Paul named Mother Katharine to the canon of saints and, at that moment, St.

Peter's Square filled with sunlight. His tenure, though, was also a time of unprecedented contraction for the archdiocese. After five years at the helm, he took up a thankless task that his predecessor, Cardinal John Krol, had put off: deciding the fate of many underused parishes and schools.

He wound up closing 20 parishes, six high schools, and 28 elementary schools, largely in poor city neighborhoods. In decline since the s, Mass attendance and priestly vocations continued slipping during his era - a trend afflicting many other dioceses.

His most agonizing period was surely the clergy sex-abuse crisis that erupted in and culminated three years later in a searing indictment of his leadership. In September , after a month grand jury investigation into clergy sex abuse in the archdiocese, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office issued a report excoriating Cardinals Bevilacqua and Krol for systematically allowing hundreds of abuser priests to go unpunished and ignoring the victims. The report named 63 priests working in the archdiocese who had abused children during the previous 50 years, and surmised there might have been more whose crimes were concealed by murky record-keeping.

Cardinal Bevilacqua did not respond publicly to the charges. His successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, called the report "very unfair" for not addressing abuse in other religious denominations and public institutions. Acquaintances described Cardinal Bevilacqua, already suffering some depression after his retirement, as devastated by the report. He rarely appeared in public afterward and granted no interviews.

Just this week, a Common Pleas Court judge reaffirmed an earlier ruling that Cardinal Bevilacqua, though described as "moderately senile," was legally competent to testify in the forthcoming trial of three priests accused of abuse.