Woman accuses former Pa. cardinal of abuse in new lawsuit

Heather Taylor was a student at St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin School near Pittsburgh when the big day came.

The bishop was coming to visit.

Her class was preparing for confirmation, the third, and final, sacrament of initiation in the Catholic church, and the bishop was going to speak to her class, to welcome them into the faith.

Heather was just a teenager at the time. Her family was devoutly Catholic. Family life revolved around the church. Her father, a vice president at PNC Bank, was a respected, and valued, patron of the church, often tithing far above what was expected.

Initiation into the Catholic faith was a rite of passage, something that was expected, and anticipated, and Heather was looking forward to it, even though she was harboring a secret that she dared not tell anyone.

On a couple of occasions, she was molested by priests at the school, according to a lawsuit she filed recently in Allegheny County. One of them said if she told anybody about it, “I would go down the drain in the bathtub,” she recalled.

The students gathered in the cafeteria, and the bishop made some remarks. He had his picture taken with the class.  

Then, she was escorted into a nearby room for a private audience with the bishop. There, she said, under the guise of adjusting her school uniform, a plaid jumper, he groped her.

The bishop was Anthony Bevilacqua, she said, a man who would, one day, attain the title of cardinal.

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Taylor’s accusation against Bevilacqua is believed to be the first time the former bishop of the Pittsburgh diocese, who later became archbishop of the Philadelphia archdiocese, has been named among the Catholic clerics who abused children.

He wasn’t listed among the 301 priests accused of sexually abusing children in the