It’s been more than a decade long court fight but finally the Diocese of Bridgeport will be forced to hand over more than 12,000 pages of documents concerning priest abuse. The Diocese, which had been headed by none other than Cardinal Edward Egan prior to his departure for NY, had fought for years to keep the documents out of the public eye.
Even in the the midst of defeat, a diocesan spokesperson struck a defiant tone. “”From the anti-church rhetoric of the first trial judge who proceeded to ‘invent’ an entirely new procedure to accommodate the press, to the lack of an impartial trial judge to reconsider the case on remand from the Connecticut Supreme Court, the history of this case raises issues that should be of concern to all. We are, therefore, currently reviewing our options in response to this decision.”
The Hartford Courant is among 3 other newspapers fighting to obtain the internal church documents. Just as they did in Los Angeles, the Connecticut documents will very likely reveal a complicit cardinal in the midst of a priest sexual abuse coverup. Egan may very well join Los Angeles’ Mahony and Boston’s Law in terms of infamy and notoriety.