High Works and Holy Rosary

Timlin was born August 5, 1927, in the High Works section of Scranton, the son of James C. and Helen Norton Timlin. The family belonged to Holy Rosary Parish in the Providence section of the city, a working-class neighborhood where Catholic life ran through the rhythms of the parish calendar.

His schooling began at Saint John the Evangelist Elementary School in South Scranton and continued at Holy Rosary High School in North Scranton. By the time he graduated from Holy Rosary, he had already committed to the priesthood.

Roman Studies and Ordination

From Scranton, Timlin went to Saint Charles College in Catonsville, Maryland, and then to Saint Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. The diocese sent him overseas for the final stretch of his formation, placing him at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, where he studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and earned a Bachelor of Sacred Theology.

He was ordained to the priesthood on July 16, 1951, in Rome. The rite was performed by Archbishop Martin J. O’Connor, a Scranton native who had risen to become rector of the North American College, a Roman connection the young priest would carry home with him.

Cathedral Years

Timlin’s first assignment came in 1952 as assistant pastor of Saint John the Evangelist Parish in Pittston. A year later, on June 12, 1953, the diocese reassigned him to the Cathedral Parish of Saint Peter in Scranton, where he remained for more than thirteen years as an assistant pastor in the seat of the diocese.

On September 12, 1966, he moved into chancery work as assistant chancellor and secretary to Bishop J. Carroll McCormick. By 1971 he had become chancellor of the diocese, and on April 23, 1972, Pope Paul VI named him Prelate of His Holiness, the honorific that carried the title of Monsignor.

Auxiliary Bishop

On July 26, 1976, Pope Paul VI appointed Timlin Auxiliary Bishop of Scranton and Titular Bishop of Gunugus. His episcopal ordination took place two months later, on September 21, 1976, at the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Scranton, with Bishop McCormick as principal consecrator and Archbishop John R. Quinn and Bishop Stanley J. Ott serving as co-consecrators.

The same year, he was named vicar general of the diocese. On September 4, 1979, while still serving as auxiliary, he took on a parish of his own as pastor of the Nativity of Our Lord Parish in South Scranton, keeping a foot in parish life while administering the larger diocese.

Eighth Bishop of Scranton

On April 24, 1984, Pope John Paul II appointed Timlin as the eighth Bishop of Scranton. He was installed on June 7, 1984, and became the first man born within the Diocese of Scranton to serve as its bishop. His tenure would run nineteen years, the second-longest episcopacy in diocesan history.

As bishop he held the Second Diocesan Synod and established the Bishop’s Annual Appeal, the centralized fundraising mechanism that still funds diocesan operations. Facing a shrinking number of priests, he presided over a major restructuring of parishes across the eleven-county diocese.

Timlin also reworked the Catholic schools system, consolidating struggling parish schools into regional schools with modern facilities and a new fundraising model. The policy spread the cost of Catholic education across parents, pastors, and the diocese rather than leaving individual parishes to bear it alone.

A Combative Conservative

Timlin was willing to use his office to make political points. In 1985 he refused to attend a St. Patrick’s Day dinner in Lackawanna County because Representative Peter W. Rodino Jr., a Catholic Democrat who supported abortion rights, was being honored, and that same year he skipped the University of Scranton commencement because the university was honoring Speaker Tip O’Neill Jr. on similar grounds.

The pattern held nearly two decades later. In 2003, Timlin again boycotted the University of Scranton commencement because the university planned to give an honorary degree to the journalist Chris Matthews, a pro-choice Catholic.

Retirement

Timlin reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2002 and sent his letter of resignation to Pope John Paul II. The pope accepted the resignation on July 25, 2003, and Joseph Francis Martino succeeded him as Bishop of Scranton.

From February through July of 2004, Timlin served as administrator of Saint Joseph’s Parish in Wilkes-Barre. Beginning in July 2004, he took up residence as rector of Villa Saint Joseph in Dunmore, the diocesan residence for retired priests, where he lived for the remainder of his life.

The Skotek Case

The darkest chapter of Timlin’s tenure concerned Father Thomas Skotek, who had raped and impregnated a teenage girl at St. Casimir Parish in Freeland sometime between 1980 and 1985. When Timlin learned of the crime in October 1986, he sent Skotek to Saint Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland, for psychological evaluation rather than to civil authorities.

A letter Timlin wrote to Skotek on October 9, 1986, captured his pastoral response to the abuser. “This is a very difficult time in your life, and I realize how upset you are. I share your grief,” Timlin wrote, assuring the priest that “with the help of God, who never abandons us,” the matter “will pass away, and all will be able to pick up and go on living,” and promising he was “most willing to do whatever I can do to help.”

In 1987, after Skotek returned from treatment, Timlin reassigned him to St. Aloysius Parish in Wilkes-Barre without warning parishioners or civil authorities about the rape. On December 13, 1989, the diocese paid $75,000 to the victim’s family under a non-disclosure agreement and liability waiver. The 2018 grand jury also found that Timlin had sent a letter to the judge sentencing Father Robert Caparelli, another priest convicted of sexual abuse, asking that Caparelli be sent to a church treatment center instead of prison.

Public Reckoning

On August 14, 2018, a Pennsylvania grand jury released its investigation of clergy abuse across the state, and the report singled out Timlin for his handling of the Skotek case. BishopAccountability, compiling the findings, noted that the grand jury concluded Timlin “had knowledge of more than two dozen cases of abuse” during his tenure as bishop.

On August 31, 2018, his successor Bishop Joseph C. Bambera prohibited Timlin from representing the diocese at any public event, liturgical or otherwise, and referred the matter to the Holy See. Bambera himself had served as vicar for priests from 1995 to 1998 and admitted that he had helped Timlin reassign a priest who had abused a minor.

Timlin defied the ban twice in public view. On November 12, 2018, he traveled to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops general assembly in Baltimore, and on February 25, 2020, he appeared in full bishop’s regalia at the installation Mass of Archbishop Nelson J. Perez in Philadelphia. On June 11, 2020, the University of Scranton stripped his name from all of its facilities, renaming its plaza after the Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero. In July of that year, Timlin, Bambera, and the diocese were sued by three men who said they had been sexually abused as minors by diocesan priests.

Death at Marywood Heights

Timlin died on the morning of Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023, at Marywood Heights in Scranton at the age of 95. His funeral Mass was held at the Cathedral of Saint Peter at 315 Wyoming Avenue on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, at 2 p.m., with Bishop Bambera presiding and public visitation running from 9 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. that same day. He was buried at Cathedral Cemetery immediately after the Mass.

In announcing the arrangements, the Diocese of Scranton acknowledged “the sensitive circumstances of planning this funeral, which must balance Bishop Timlin’s full life of service to the church with a clear understanding of imperfect judgments related to clergy sexual abuse.” It was the plainest public admission the diocese would make about the man it was burying.