Church official faulted again

This time the response at St. Joseph Church was muted.

Many members of the 3,900-family congregation approached Thursday at the church declined to comment.

"I'm absolutely stunned," said one woman who declined to give her name. "We totally trusted him."

In the latest grand jury report, Lynn emerged as the first member of any Catholic Church hierarchy in the nation to be criminally charged with endangering the welfare of children.

As secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, Lynn was responsible for overseeing pastoral assignments and investigating abuse complaints.

The damning grand jury report said that in the mid-1990s, Lynn "purposefully" recommended that priests who had sexually abused children be placed into new parishes, where at least three found more victims.

"He showed no interest at all in defending the Archdiocese's children," the grand jury said in its 124-page report. "On the contrary, he consistently endangered them."

Lynn, 60, was charged with two felony counts of endangering the welfare of children, charges that one of his lawyers said were "absurd" and unfounded.

"This is a very rare case," said Jeffrey Lindy, who represents Lynn. "What the D.A.'s Office has done is absolutely unprecedented."

He said prosecutors, in their anger over uncovering abuses in the church, had unfairly targeted his client.

Lindy said Lynn, who was not accused of abuse, was being made a scapegoat for a church hierarchy that for years had eluded prosecutors' grasp, in part because of the statute of limitations on many of the crimes.

"Msgr. Lynn has never been accused of abuse, has never abused anybody or touched a hair on a child's head," said Lindy, who represents Lynn along with lawyer Thomas Bergstrom.

Lynn was "devastated" by the charges and would vigorously contest them, Lindy said.

District Attorney Seth Williams in announcing the charges against Lynn, said he had "knowingly endangered the children he was supposed to defend."

Williams said the latest grand jury investigation had uncovered new cases "and far more specific evidence" than the previous panel uncovered.

He said Lynn's earlier behavior, which included allowing at least five priests accused of raping, molesting, or sodomizing children to remain in active ministry, could be cited by prosecutors as part of a "common scheme" and show an intent to endanger children.

Victims' advocates heralded the decision to charge Lynn, a member of the church hierarchy.

"It's particularly encouraging to finally see one of the hundreds and hundreds of supervisors facing charges," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "That's encouraging."

Robert Karpinski, who was abused by a priest as a boy in Philadelphia, said he, too, was heartened by the prosecutor's decision.

"I always believed, based on my experience, that there was nothing that could be done to these men because the statute of limitations had run out," said Karpinski, now 44 and living in Chicago. "I feel some sense of justice."

Inquirer staff writer Kathleen Brady Shea contributed to this article.