Word: bridgeporter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...shock is that so many cases have spilled like stained vestments into public view--not just in Boston but in Los Angeles and St. Louis, Mo., and Philadelphia and Palm Beach, Fla., and Washington and Portland, Maine, and Bridgeport, Conn. The horror is not their singularity but their ghastly similarity: claims of a Roman Catholic priest sexually abusing children, and the church covering it up whether it involves Father Dan or Father Oliver or Father Rocco...
...back in those Maverick days by Father Brett. "I had this rush of feeling," Martinelli told TIME. "I realized, Wow, that's what happened to me." He began seeing a therapist and a year later filed a civil suit in New Haven, Conn., federal court against Brett and the Bridgeport diocese, then led by Bishop Edward Egan...
Church authorities in Bridgeport had discovered Brett's proclivities as early as 1964. They did not report him to civil authorities or warn parishioners, and they let him minister at ecclesiastical posts around the country. In 1990 when Egan took over as bishop, he met with Brett and later noted, "All things considered, he made a good impression. In the course of our conversation, the particulars of his case came out in detail and with grace." As a result, Egan let Brett come back to Bridgeport as a priest...
...despite pleas to defrock him. Egan, now Cardinal and Archbishop of New York and perhaps the pre-eminent prelate in the U.S., is under heavy fire to explain his handling not just of Brett but of other pending cases of priests whose abuses he allegedly hushed up while in Bridgeport. For Martinelli, there's still no solace. He would, he says, have settled for nothing in cash if he just could have got a public apology...
...concern" for the victims. But the muted words would not satisfy those looking for a concrete course of action. In a Palm Sunday pastoral letter, Egan reiterated his policy of overseeing abuse allegations himself but urged victims to bring them to the attention of police. And he defended his Bridgeport conduct like a lawyer: every case disclosed had occurred on his predecessor's watch; he took the word of experts when he recycled abusive priests back into the ministry...