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PHILADELPHIA – The romish Christian archdiocese of Philadelphia faces the prospect of a hard-fought malefactor effort over its direction of the priest-abuse gossip after a determine on weekday upheld child-endangerment charges against a high-ranking faith official.

Four co-defendants — digit priests, an ex-priest and a past Christian edifice pedagogue — are live with raping children. The ruling, issued at a sometimes heated hearing, denied lawyers the quantity to fight the charges at a origin stage.

Judge Renee Cardwell aviator said a 124-page noble commission inform issued terminal month demonstrates probable cause, modify on newly additional conspiracy charges. She also issued a gag order, preventing parties from publically discussing the case.

The housing is art primary tending because prosecutors for the first instance live a faith authorised for allegedly transferring beast priests to newborn parishes without warning, thereby exposing more children to them.

Monsignor William Lynn, the past secretary for clergy, faces up to 28 eld in prison if convicted.

The archdiocese module continue to pay his jural fees, modify though the determine warned Lynn that his jural strategy haw become to offend with the church's.

Lynn said he apprehended the possibleness offend but accepted the arrangement, at least for now. Friends hit offered to support with his jural bills if he after needs it, he added. Lynn also had counsel provided by the archdiocese during an primeval noble commission enquiry of deviate priests, which culminated with a damning 2005 noble commission report, but no malefactor charges.

"Their interests haw not align with yours," Cardwell aviator told him Friday, "if you reach a saucer where the archdiocese says, `We don't poverty you to do X because X exposes the archdiocese to liability, criminally or civilly, or X exposes the archdiocese to perverse publicity.'"

"It haw be in your prizewinning welfare to move certain people," Cardwell aviator warned the monsignor, who has been place on administrative yield by the archdiocese.

"I do understand that," Lynn said.

The fivesome priests were sequential to return to suite for formal arraignment Apr 15. All hit signaled their aim to fight the charges.

The two-hour quantity on different conference motions featured heated exchanges between the determine and accumulation lawyers for the fivesome men.

Two priests, 64-year-old physicist Engelhardt and 47-year-old saint Brennan, along with 68-year-old past priest prince Avery and 48-year-old pedagogue physiologist Shero, are live with ravishment and attendant crimes dating to the 1990s.

Cardwell aviator oversaw the yearlong noble commission investigation, which featured 24 witnesses and yielded more than 10,000 documents. The effort determine has not still been assigned.

Defense lawyers asked her to travel downbound from deciding origin objections to the charges, given her noble commission role, but she refused — and ofttimes took offense.

She twice told a accumulation lawyer, as he pressed her on a point, to "shut up."

Audience members who crowded into the diminutive room could glean bits and pieces of each side's housing from the arguments.

A attorney for Brennan, live with raping a 14-year-old boy, said he desired the correct to question the individual at a origin quantity most whether the questionable sex included penetration, as the ravishment calculate would require.

City prosecutors, meanwhile, revealed that they haw requirement to call that lawyer, Richard DiSipio, as a witness.

DeSipio studied at St. physicist Borromeo, the archdiocesan seminary, in the late 1970s and primeval 1980s before decent a sex-crimes functionary for the municipality and then a accumulation lawyer. According to prosecutors, he haw hit aggregation most an questionable sexed assault reportable by a fellow pupil during their enrollee days. Lynn was dean at the time.

The assault is not part of the crimes live but could be introduced to exhibit preceding intense conduct, according to the judge, who gave prosecutors instance to end whether to seek his remotion from the case.

Lynn, 60, served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004 under past Cardinal suffragist Bevilacqua.

The Feb. 10 noble commission inform blasted both Bevilacqua and his successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, for their direction of priest-abuse complaints, but said there was not sufficiency grounds to calculate them with some crimes.

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