Ginsberg verbally notified attorneys in the case of her decision late Tuesday.
The diocese's attorney, Ralph W. Johnson III, said church officials will now decide whether to ask the full nine-member court to keep the stay in place.
The diocese is trying to keep sealed more than 12,600 pages of depositions, exhibits and legal arguments involving 23 lawsuits against seven priests from the Bridgeport diocese.
Most of the lawsuits were filed in the mid-1990s. The lawsuits were settled in 2001 by the church for undisclosed amounts with the agreement that the settlements and the documents would remain sealed forever.
Four newspapers, including The Courant, filed a lawsuit to have the documents unsealed in 2002 when it was discovered they had not been destroyed by the judicial department.
Among the court documents are three depositions by then-Bishop Edward Egan, who was in charge of the Bridgeport Diocese when most of the lawsuits against priests under his control were filed and adjudicated.
Egan recently retired as the archbishop of New York.
Stories detailing how Egan and other officials in Bridgeport ignored accusations or protected abusive priests were published in The Courant in 2002. The stories were based on some of the secret court documents that the paper obtained on its own.
The state Supreme Court has twice ruled that the documents should be unsealed.
A possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is the church's last legal step to keep the documents secret. The diocese is expected to file its petition with the high court by the end of this month.
The high court usually doesn't decide which cases it will hear until the fall. The court decides to hear only a handful of the petitions it receives.
In its motion asking the high court to keep the stay in place, the diocese says there is a good chance the high court will take up the diocese's case because of two issues: the state Supreme Court's definition of what constitutes a legal document; and the church's contention that its First Amendment rights would be violated by the unsealing of documents that church officials produced with the understanding that they would be sealed forever.
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
Tiktiktik en een mens heeft alweer gegeten en gedronken. Dag kardinaal.
U mag niet met genen klooien van uw collega William Levada
In early June, the pope appointed Cardinal Egan to the Vatican's highest court.
Uit Bishop-accountability
In his previous post as bishop in Bridgeport, Conn., he let some priests keep working after they were accused of sexual abuse. In closed testimony in a 1997 lawsuit, he expressed doubt about the veracity of most allegations, saying that "very few have even come close to having anyone prove anything." One priest he supported was the Rev. Raymond Pcolka, who had been accused as far back as 1966. Father Pcolka's alleged victims included more than a dozen boys and girls - some as young as 7 - who described being spanked and forced into oral and anal sex. Cardinal Egan kept him on the job until 1992, when another accuser came forward and the priest refused orders to remain at a treatment center. The diocese has since settled lawsuits against Father Pcolka, who refused to answer lawyers' questions during the litigation. Another priest protected by Cardinal Egan was the Rev. Laurence Brett, who had first admitted abuse in 1964 - biting a boy's genitals. After Cardinal Egan became Bridgeport's bishop in the late 1980s, he met Father Brett and endorsed him for continued ministry. "In the course of our conversation," he wrote, "the particulars of his case came out in detail and with grace." Further accusations led to Father Brett's suspension in 1993. In a recent letter to New York parishioners, Cardinal Egan said his policy in Bridgeport was to do a preliminary investigation of accused priests, then send them for psychiatric evaluation and heed doctors' advice. The Connecticut Postlater showed that the policy wasn't followed in the case of the Rev. Walter Coleman, who stayed on the job for more than a year after the Bridgeport diocese concluded in early 1994 that he had abused the son of a woman with whom he had an affair and bought a house. In early June, the pope appointed Cardinal Egan to the Vatican's highest court. In mid-May, the Westchester County district attorney convened a grand jury to investigate New York archdiocesan leaders' handling of sex-abuse allegations.
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