A third said church leaders left the Rev. Michael Murtha in ministry for years after allegedly finding a cache of child pornography and a sexually graphic "fantasy letter" he had written to a boy in his Northeast Philadelphia parish.
None of the allegations was new; prosecutors acknowledged that some were decades old and unproven.
But they offered them in a bid to convince Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina that jurors in the looming sex-abuse and conspiracy trials of four current and former priests cannot properly weigh the crimes unless they also hear about decades of abuse and cover-up.
That is the only way, Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington told Sarmina, "for the jury to get the complete picture."
The clash over the old cases has become the central battle in the prosecution of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former archdiocesan administrator who last year became the first church official in the nation arrested and charged with covering up or enabling child-sex assaults by priests.
Prosecutors charged Lynn, 61, with conspiracy and endangerment. They say that as secretary for clergy, he recommended parish assignments for Avery and another priest, the Rev. James J. Brennan, in the 1990s despite knowing or suspecting that they had abused children. Avery and Brennan later molested boys in their parishes, a grand jury concluded last year.
The defendants have pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Feb. 22, with opening statements a month later.
Lynn's attorneys, who are being paid by the archdiocese, repeatedly argued that he is unfairly being made a scapegoat for the church's wider failings on clergy sex abuse.
Attorney Thomas Bergstrom called the prosecution's attempt to introduce the case files of Murtha, Cudemo, and 25 other priests not charged in the case "nutty" and "dangerous."
