Retired Cardinal Bevilacqua dies in Pa. at 88

PHILADELPHIA — Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, the retired head of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and an uncharged central figure in a child sex-abuse case that involves the alleged shuffling of predator priests to unwitting parishes, has died. He was 88.

Bevilacqua died in his sleep Tuesday night — days after lawyers battled over his competence to testify at an upcoming trial — at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in the Philadelphia suburb of Wynnewood after battling dementia and an undisclosed form of cancer, an archdiocese spokeswoman said. He had been the spiritual leader of the 1.5 million-member Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1988 until his retirement in 2003.

Bevilacqua, trained in both civil and canon law, was sharply criticized but never charged by two Philadelphia grand juries investigating child sex abuse complaints lodged against dozens of priests in the archdiocese.

In the days before his death, a Philadelphia judge had ruled him competent to testify if called as a witness in the child-endangerment trial of a high-ranking former aide accused of moving sexually-abusive priests to new churches as part of a systematic cover-up of child sex allegations.

Last year, following the second grand jury report, prosecutors said not much had changed since the first investigation, when the "abuse was known, tolerated, and hidden by high church officials, up to and including the Cardinal (Bevilacqua) himself."

As a church leader, Bevilacqua campaigned for a moratorium on the death penalty and often spoke out against homosexuality, birth control and abortion. He headed the influential bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

In 2002, when the church came under fire for clerical sexual abuse, he called homosexuality an "aberration, a moral evil" and suggested gays were more likely to commit abuse. Under Bevilacqua, the Philadelphia archdiocese tried to weed out gay candidates to the priesthood and expelled any seminarian found to be an active homosexual — a zero-tolerance policy experts called relatively rare.

He was not averse to new methods of outreach. Heeding the pope's call for a "New Evangelization," Bevilacqua used then-novel methods, such a toll-free confession line, a live weekly radio call-in program and an online forum for people to pose questions to priests.

"We are carrying out the wishes of the Holy Father for a new evangelization, reaching out to people like never before," Bevilacqua said after a telephone hotline began in 1998.