Trumbull - The Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport admitted in court papers that it has documented 32 allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests associated with a Trumbull parish over 40 years.

The diocese made the admission last week in a lawsuit filed by the estate of Michael Powel, who died last year. Powel had claimed that he was sexually abused at St. Theresa's Parish in Trumbull between 1968, when he was 9 years old, and 1972, when he was 13.

The diocese is contesting a request from Powel's attorneys to turn over all documents regarding sexual abuse by priests at the parish by Wednesday. In its filing in Waterbury Superior Court, the diocese said it has compiled 126 boxes of documents and files detailing 32 allegations of abuse by eight St. Theresa's priests.

Nine of the alleged encounters occurred before 1973, according to the court papers. Eighteen allegations cover encounters that allegedly occurred between 1973 and 1983, two from 1984 to 1989, and three from after 1990.

The diocese is asking the court to allow it to withhold all the allegations made after 1973, saying they are irrelevant to Powel's lawsuit. It says that nearly all the claims were not reported to the diocese until the late 1980s.

The diocese should not have to spend thousand of dollars to review the documents "simply because Michael Powel alleges he was abused one time for one minute in the winter of 1971," the diocese said in its filing.

Powel's attorneys said that the diocese's motion is a "bait-and-switch" to avoid producing documents by Wednesday, a date previously agreed upon to provide discovery materials.

Powel, a former Florida resident, alleged that he was repeatedly abused by a longtime parish landscaping employee, Carlo Fabbozzi. Powel also accused Fabbozzi of introducing him to a priest, Joseph Gorecki, who Powel accused of molesting him once at St. Theresa's school in 1971.

Powel sued the diocese in 2006 after settling a lawsuit against Fabbozzi.

Diocese spokesman Joseph McAleer said priests from the parish who were found to have abused children are no longer in ministry and that the diocese removes from ministry any priest who is found to have abused a child.

Reports of clergy sex abuse came to light in 2002 when church records in Boston showed that church officials had reports of priests molesting children, but kept the complaints secret while shuffling some priests from parish to parish.

Similar sex abuse complaints were soon uncovered across the country, and waves of lawsuits led to massive settlements.

The Bridgeport diocese has fought the release of abuse records in the past. This year, it unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to block the release of more than 12,000 pages of documents generated by lawsuits against priests in Connecticut.