{"id":2488,"date":"2011-02-15T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/02\/top-church-official-indicted-i.php"},"modified":"2011-02-15T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T06:00:00","slug":"top-church-official-indicted-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/02\/top-church-official-indicted-i","title":{"rendered":"Top Church Official Indicted in Philly Abuse Probe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) Advocates for victims of clergy sexual abuse are hailing the indictment of a senior Roman Catholic official in the U.S. on charges of endangering the welfare of a child for failing to remove abusive priests from ministry.<br \/>\nThe accusations against Monsignor William Lynn, former vicar for clergy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, represent the first time a U.S. prosecutor has brought abuse charges against a member of the Catholic hierarchy since the church&#8217;s clergy sex scandal exploded in 2002.<br \/>\n&#8220;This indictment will send shivers up the spines of hundreds of chancery officials across the country,&#8221; said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.<br \/>\nThree other Catholic priests and a school teacher were accused last Thursday (Feb. 10) of raping two boys after a Philadelphia grand jury issued a scathing, 124-page report.<br \/>\nLynn was vicar for clergy in Philadelphia from 1992-2004. &#8220;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,&#8221; the grand jury said.<br \/>\nLynn denied the accusations through his attorney. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 14 years in prison. His attorney, Tom Bergstrom, told The Associated Press: &#8220;We certainly don&#8217;t concede for a moment that he knew he was putting children at risk.&#8221;     Also last week, the vicar for clergy in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles resigned after the archdiocese acknowledged a priest who had admitted to sexually abusing a teenage girl during the 1960s was given a parish assignment in 2009.<br \/>\nThe priest, the Rev. Martin P. O&#8217;Loghlen, had also been appointed to the archdiocese&#8217;s sexual abuse advisory board. Former Los Angeles vicar for clergy Monsignor Michael Meyers resigned on Friday.<br \/>\n<strong>&#8211; DANIEL BURKE<\/strong>, <em>2011 Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) Advocates for victims of clergy sexual abuse are hailing the indictment of a senior Roman Catholic official in the U.S. on charges of endangering the welfare of a child for failing to remove abusive priests from ministry. The accusations against Monsignor William Lynn, former vicar for clergy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, represent the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-news","category-rns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Top Church Official Indicted in Philly Abuse Probe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/02\/top-church-official-indicted-i\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Top Church Official Indicted in Philly Abuse Probe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) Advocates for victims of clergy sexual abuse are hailing the indictment of a senior Roman Catholic official in the U.S. on charges of endangering the welfare of a child for failing to remove abusive priests from ministry. 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