12-02-2012, 05:46 AM
Cardinal Dies One Day After Judge Said He Could Be Called to Testify in Child Sex-Abuse and Endangerment Trial of Three Current and Former Priests
February 11th, 2012Via: Philadelphia Enquirer:Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman asked the county coroner to examine the body of Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua last week because the timing of the 88-year-old prelate's death struck her as "peculiar," she said Friday.
Ferman acknowledged that she enlisted county Coroner Walter I. Hofman because the cardinal died one day after a Philadelphia judge said Bevilacqua could be called to testify at the child sex-abuse and endangerment trial of three current and former priests.
"I had the same reaction that many people had and that many people communicated with me," Ferman told reporters at a news conference in Norristown. "It struck many of us as odd, as peculiar, that the cardinal passed away so suddenly after the court ruling. . . . I just thought that someone should make sure that nothing happened that was inappropriate."
Ferman said she had no information to suggest that the cardinal was the victim of foul play or an unnatural death. She said her office had not opened an investigation.
"This death is not the subject of a criminal inquiry," she said. "It is simply being examined by the coroner to determine what the cause of death is."
Ferman spoke a day after Hofman told The Inquirer that prosecutors had asked him to examine the body "to make sure there were no intervening events that could have speeded up" the cardinal's death.
Bevilacqua died shortly after 9 p.m. Jan. 31 at his residence at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, just outside the city limits. He had been in declining health since his 2003 retirement as the leader of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Lawyers and church officials said he suffered from cancer, dementia, and other ailments.
Hoffman has deferred declaring a cause of death. He said he did not conduct a full autopsy, but declined to elaborate.
In an interview Friday, Hofman said he saw no marks on the cardinal's body or other evidence to suggest anything but a natural death. The coroner said he would review the cardinal's medical records and toxicology test results to see if Bevilacqua had unusually high or unexplained amounts of prescription medication or other chemicals in his blood.
Posted in Assassination, Atrocities, Coincidence?, Elite, Religion |
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