PHILADELPHIA, March 16 (UPI) -- The troubled Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia faced a new lawsuit Wednesday from a man who says a priest molested him.
Plaintiff Frank Finnegan says in 1968 or 1969, the Rev. John Kline abused him while on vacation with the Finnegan family on the Jersey Shore, The Daily Times of Delaware County, Pa., reported.
Kline, a teacher at a Catholic high school who died in 1996, had befriended Finnegan's mother, a parish secretary.
Finnegan, who says he recalled the alleged crime only in 2007, is seeking more than $50,000, claiming severe emotional suffering.
The lawsuit names the current archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali; his predecessor, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua; Monsignor William Lynn, Bevilacqua's top aide; and Karen Becker, the archdiocese's chief of child and protection. Lynn is under indictment in other alleged clerical sex abuse cover-ups, and a grand jury stopped just short of indicting Bevilacqua, now 87 and senile.
Finnegan asserts the statue of limitations should not apply "because the archdiocese fraudulently concealed material information."
On Tuesday, the Rev. James Brennan, accused of raping a 14-year-old boy, went on the radio to deny the charges and said of his accuser, "I don't know what's going on inside his mind," The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
In February, a grand jury investigating child sexual abuse named 37 priests, and the archdiocese subsequently suspended 21 of them.
