Trial has digressed, cleric’s defense says

PHILADELPHIA — Defense lawyers complained Tuesday that the lengthy priest-abuse trial of a Roman Catholic Church official has veered far afield from the original charges.

Monsignor William Lynn is charged with conspiring to hide child-sex-abuse complaints against two co-defendant priests and endangering children by keeping them in ministry. But a judge has let jurors hear weeks of testimony about how Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, handled abuse complaints lodged against 20 other priests.

“This case has come down to [the Rev. Stanley] Gana and [the Rev. Nicholas] Cudem, despite the fact they’re not charged,” defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom argued outside of the jury’s presence.

Gana and Cudemo were accused of heinous, repeated sexual assaults in a 2005 grand jury report. Both were defrocked in the years that followed, but neither was charged criminally because of legal time limits.

Prosecutors have spent days detailing their alleged crimes to the jury.

But Lynn is not charged with conspiring with either one of them, Bergstrom noted, as he tried to block the depositions of two cloistered nuns.