Coroner rules Bevilacqua died of natural causes

Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua died of natural causes, not for any reason related to the looming conspiracy and sex-abuse trial of one of his former top aides, the Montgomery County coroner said Thursday.

Ending weeks of speculation, Coroner Walter I. Hofman blamed the 88-year-old cardinal's Jan. 31 death on routine factors: heart disease, prostate cancer, and old age.

"This is a natural death," Hofman told reporters at his Norristown office. "Elderly people with preexisting disease often die quite suddenly."

Hofman released his ruling after toxicology tests showed no inappropriate amounts of medication or chemicals in Bevilacqua's system when he died.

With it, he hoped to quell rumors and questions that had swirled since District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman asked him to review the death.

Bevilacqua retired as the leader of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 2003, but he remained an imposing figure in the lives of area Catholics, particularly as the church grappled with new allegations of clergy child-sex abuse and cover-up during his tenure.

In November, prosecutors and defense attorneys for one of his former top aides questioned the cardinal for seven hours in a private videotaped deposition. And in late January, a Philadelphia judge reiterated her ruling that Bevilacqua was presumed competent to testify at the March 26 trial of the aide, Msgr. William J. Lynn, and two priests.

One night later, Bevilacqua died in his residence at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Montgomery County, just outside the city limits. A nurse was at his side, the coroner said.

Hofman said Lower Merion Township police notified him immediately.

The next day, Ferman asked the coroner to "make sure that nothing happened that was inappropriate," she later explained. Ferman said that she had no reason to suspect foul play but that she and others found the timing of Bevilacqua's death "peculiar" because it came on the heels of the judge's decision in the abuse case.

Hofman agreed to defer his ruling until he received results of a toxicology exam and had Bevilacqua's body brought from an Upper Darby funeral home to his office.

The cardinal had been embalmed, but Hofman said he and his staff were able to take adequate samples of his liver tissue, muscle, spinal fluid, urine, and eye fluid for the toxicology tests.

He reviewed the results of those tests with a list of medications that Bevilacqua had been taking.

"There is nothing that is out of line," he said.

Ferman declined to comment Thursday.

Hofman also said his review of the records confirmed what church officials had long declared: that Bevilacqua suffered from dementia.

"We do know it was fairly advanced," Hofman said. "I have a copy of a CAT scan from mid-January that showed evidence of brain atrophy, the brain shrinking away."

Hofman said he got hate mail from critics who read or saw news reports about his investigation. Some, he said, mistakenly thought he had the cardinal's body removed from its crypt.

Donna Farrell, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said she hoped the news would end speculation about Bevilacqua's death.

"The coroner's announcement confirms what we believed and knew in our hearts to be the case all along," Farrell said, "that Cardinal Bevilacqua, he was ailing, that he was in his late 80s, and that he died of natural causes."