"This does nothing to address the broader issue that they broke the law and they escaped prosecution because the statute of limitations is so short," said John Salveson, a leader of the national advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and Other Clergy.
Because the crimes cannot be prosecuted, he said, Megan's Law notifications do not apply and, now that the former priests are outside church control, they are free to move about as they please.
"They'll go God knows where," Salveson said. "This is the church washing its hands."
Donna Farrell, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said she had no comment on the defrockings other than to allow the actions to speak for themselves.
The three defrocked priests - Edward V. Avery, Stanley M. Gana and James E. McGuire - were named in a lengthy grand jury report issued in September that identified 63 archdiocesan priests as abusers.
(The archdiocese considers 56 as having been under its control. Of those, 17 have been defrocked - one of whom has since died; 10 others are dead; one is in prison; 20 have had their ministries restricted; and seven have cases pending with the Vatican. One priest cannot be found.)
Avery, Gana and McGuire, each of whom became a priest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1970, are the most recent to have been defrocked by the Vatican. They had been stripped of their ministries in 2002 and 2003 as a result of the investigation into sexual abuse.
Gana, at one time a chaplain for the Boy Scouts of America, had so many victims that the grand jury could characterize the number only as "countless."
