Christ, the high priest in this Sunday's reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, "did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands." The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to enter into deliberations on an appeal filed by the Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut of a state court decision to make public more than 12,000 pages of clergy sexual abuse files.

The appeal to the nation's highest court was the diocese's likely last legal effort to keep secret documents from 23 clergy sexual abuse cases that were settled in 2001. Four newspapers--the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and Hartford Courant--have been fighting for eight years to get the documents unsealed.

Among the court documents are three depositions by former Bishop Edward Egan, who was in charge of the Bridgeport diocese when most of the lawsuits against priests under his supervision were filed and adjudicated. Egan retired last year as the archbishop of New York City.

The Hartford Courant obtained copies of Egan's depositions, which show that he knowingly transferred priests who had been accused of sexual molesting minors to different parishes and rarely removed an alleged pedophile priest from service.

Church officials believe that the church has been treated unfairly by the courts and the media in the case. "We were disappointed to learn that the United States Supreme Court has decided not to hear our case. The Court reviews only about 80 cases out of more than 10,000 cases presented, and regularly reminds the public that it must decline to review many cases that were wrongly decided by the lower courts. Unfortunately, ours was one of those cases," diocesan spokesman Joseph McAleer said.

Source: An article by Dave Altimari for the Hartford Courant