Edward Michael Egan, American Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, is dead. As a member of the church hierarchy, Egan protected and enabled pedophile priests by shuffling them from parish to parish in an immoral attempt to preserve the reputation of the church and protect the church from financial liability.

Egan died on March 5, at the age of 82. He served as Bishop of Bridgeport from 1988 to 2000, and as Archbishop of New York from 2000 to 2009.

While serving as Bishop of the Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocese, Egan allowed several priests facing multiple accusations of sexual abuse to continue working for years, putting numerous children at risk.

Egan also failed to investigate other complaints of abuse, and, during closed testimony in 1999, suggested that a dozen people who made complaints of rape, molestation and beatings against the same priest may have all been lying.

In addition, Egan authorized payments to victims in exchange for silence agreements, and lied about those payments during a deposition.

The Hartford Courant has a detailed account of Egan’s gross misconduct and abject moral failure in handling the rape and abuse of children by Catholic clergy while Bishop of Bridgeport.

The NY Times reports that as Archbishop of New York, Egan “was slow and reluctant to act” when pressed by prosecutors to turn over files on accused priests. Indeed, Egan openly flouted the law, at one point declaring the church had no obligation to report sexual-abuse accusations to the authorities, even though a law on the books since the 1970s states otherwise.

According to the NY Times report, Egan believed that his diocese did nothing wrong in its handling of complaints and that most priests were innocent.

NBC reports that in 2002, at the height of the clergy sex abuse crisis, Egan wrote a letter to parishioners apologizing for any mistakes in responding to victims and stopping abusers. But a decade later, Egan told Connecticut magazine:

I should never have said that. I did say if we did anything wrong, I’m sorry, but I don’t think we did anything wrong.

Egan went to his death believing that by protecting and enabling pedophile priests he did nothing wrong. Despite this fact, he is celebrated by the Catholic church, and will be entombed in the crypt at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.