Episcopal Church restores once-defrocked bishop

Nearly three years after the Episcopal Church suspended him for covering up his brother’s sexual abuse of a minor girl, Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. has been restored as head of the Diocese of Pennsylvania.

In a ruling released Thursday, a church appeals panel reversed a lower church court’s 2008 order that Bennison be defrocked and permanently removed from the helm of the 55,000-member diocese.

Although Bennison badly mishandled his brother’s prolonged sexual abuse of a teenager in his California parish during the 1970s, the appeals court concluded, the church’s statute of limitations on such wrongdoing had expired after 10 years.

Bennison, 66, said in a teleconference call from Michigan, where he is vacationing, that he would return to his duties as bishop on Aug. 16.

“I hope I am a changed person,” he said, adding that his immediate goal was to listen to the men and women who have led the diocese since he was suspended in October 2007.

Bennison said he would likely devote more attention to the spiritual affairs of the diocese than to its finances or administration.

“My main reason for coming back is that I think I have something to offer along those lines … preaching and teaching,” he said.