Clergy

THE BATTLE in Harrisburg over school vouchers has placed state Rep. James Roebuck Jr. in political peril to a newcomer with well-heeled campaign contributors. Roebuck, 67, who has represented West Philly's 188th District since 1985, says he is using his post as the ranking Democrat on the state House Education Committee to stymie legislation that would allow tax dollars to be used to pay for private-school tuition. He is being challenged in Tuesday's primary election by Fatimah Muhammad, 27, who favors the voucher plan and tells a compelling story about being homeless as a child and about how education improved her life.

His was the typical Philadelphia Catholic family, the witness said. Mom and Dad were regulars at Mass. He and his sister helped out at the rectory. And no one was held in higher esteem than a priest. "We were raised with the belief that a priest never did anything wrong," he told a Common Pleas Court jury. In that sense, the man, now 45, echoed other alleged abuse victims at the landmark conspiracy and child-sex abuse trial of two Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests.

CARDINAL ANTHONY J. Bevilacqua broke civil and church laws when he ordered aides in 1994 to shred a list that identified dozens of Philadelphia-area priests suspected of molesting children, an expert on canon law and clergy sex abuse testified on Thursday. "That was like obstructing justice cubed," the Rev. Thomas P. Doyle told a Common Pleas jury. "He's got a list of men who may have abused children, and he's going to shred it?" The assertion thrust the late cardinal squarely into the spotlight for the first time in the landmark child-sex-abuse and endangerment trial against his former secretary for clergy, Monsignor William J. Lynn.

For a lying, scheming criminal and junkie, he cleaned up well, and, under bruising cross-examination, more than held his own. If I had to score Round One of the most important testimony to date in the trial concerning sex abuse and conspiracy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, I'd give it to the beleaguered - yet believable - 30-year-old victim staring at his alleged abuser in court. "Mark," as he was labeled in the 2011 grand jury report, is the Bucks County man charging a criminal breach of trust by the Rev. James J. Brennan, a priest and family friend he thought of as an uncle.

One priest, the Rev. John Cannon, sneaked into a cabin at night at a church-run camp, groped the boys in their beds, and forced them to do the same to him. Another, the Rev. Stanley Gana, had a stable of boys rotate through his rectory bedroom, once inviting two at the same time so neither thought he was playing favorites. In both cases, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia left the men in ministry for years after allegations against them first surfaced, a Philadelphia jury was told Monday.

Stalking. Groping. Gay bondage porn. A sexually graphic love letter to a grade-school boy. The topics discussed in a third-floor Philadelphia courtroom last week might unnerve most observers. That they emerged in testimony about priests - and at times, from priests - only amplified the uneasiness. After all, a prosecutor told jurors at the start of this landmark clergy sex-abuse trial in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, priests are viewed as God's agents on Earth. Though much of the evidence introduced against Msgr.

SHE WAS 13, the fifth of seven children in a devout Catholic family in Roslyn whose mother attended Mass once or twice daily. But the girl dreaded Sunday mornings. For her, Sundays meant a morning of groping by the Rev. Albert T. Kostelnick. The woman, now in her mid-50s, told a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury Thursday about how Kostelnick fondled her for two years as she served food in the rectory of St. John of the Cross Church, in Roslyn - and then did the same to two of her sisters who followed her into the job. "I didn't know what to do," she told the jury.

TWICE IN 1993, Monsignor William Lynn received letters from parishioners at St. Therese of the Child Jesus church who were concerned because their pastor, the Rev. Edward Avery, had taken an unexplained leave. As secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Lynn knew the reason: A 29-year-old man had told Lynn that Avery molested him in the 1970s. Lynn had recommended that the Mount Airy pastor get a confidential evaluation and treatment. But Lynn didn't disclose that in his replies to the two parishioners, a detective testified Tuesday.

Twice in 1993, Msgr. William J. Lynn received letters from parishioners at St. Therese of the Child Jesus Church who were concerned because their pastor, the Rev. Edward V. Avery, had taken an unexplained leave. As secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Lynn knew the reason: A 29-year-old man had told Lynn that Avery molested him in the 1970s. Lynn had recommended that the Mount Airy pastor get confidential evaluation and treatment. But Lynn didn't disclose that in his replies to the two parishioners, a detective testified Tuesday.

It was one of the most graphic details in a grand jury report filled with uncomfortable passages: A sentence on Page 37 stating that after the Rev. James J. Brennan anally raped a 14-year-old, the priest remained inside his body as the boy cried himself to sleep. Yet in Monday's opening statements at the long-awaited clergy sex-abuse trial in Common Pleas Court, both the prosecution and a defense attorney offered a sharply sanitized version of that night, which casts doubt on the case against Brennan and could weaken the conspiracy charge against Msgr.