Egan, who followed Bishop Curtis in 1988 and led the diocese until 2000, came after the peak in the number of abuse cases but - the report found - his tenure was marked by a "dismissive, uncaring, and at times threatening attitude toward survivors and survivors' advocates."
Egan went on to serve as Archbishop of New York from 2000-2009 and was made a cardinal in 2001 - the same year as Theodore McCarrick. He died in 2015.
In dealing with survivors of abuse, the report found he "followed a scorched-earth litigation policy" that dragged out court battles and "re-victimized survivor plaintiffs," not only taxing diocesan assets in the process but poisoning the Church's standing with the laity and society.
The report also found that Egan "freely acknowledged" that he prioritized diocesan asset preservation and protection against scandal over justice for abuse victims, the report said. Along with Bishops Curtis and Shehan, he continuing transferring known abusers without disclosing the danger to pastors and parishioners.
In a 1993 letter cited by the report, Egan explained that he refused to take any canonical action against an abuser priest, or to seek to have him removed from ministry because the scandal would be worse for the Church than the abuse.
"There can be no canonical process either for the removal of a diocesan priest from his priestly duties or for the removal of a priest from his parish when there is serious reason to believe that the priest in question is guilty of the sexual violation of children, and especially when he has confessed," Egan wrote.
"For the bishop who would countenance such a process would be opening the way to the gravest of evils, among them the financial ruin of the diocese which he is to serve."
And although Connecticut had a state mandatory reporting law on abuse by 1971, both Curtis and Egan operated in ignorance or defiance of it until 1990, the report said.
After decades of abuse and cover-up at the diocesan level, Bishop William Lori-now Archbishop of Baltimore-took over in 2001 and, along with Bishop Frank Caggiano, "reversed" this problematic response by instituting mandatory reporting procedures, "zero tolerance" for abusers, and laicization of the worst offenders.
Despite recent reforming efforts, the report concluded that "many in the diocese remain extremely skeptical of healing efforts or have been permanently alienated from the Church."
In preparing the report, investigators reviewed more than 250,000 paper and electronic records and interviewed more than 50 witnesses, including abuse survivors, current and former bishops and staff, priests, attorneys and administrators.
(Story continues below)
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
They noted gaps in evidence from an "inadequate and antiquated" record-keeping system that dated from the founding of the diocese in 1953 until the early 2000s. In addition, various scenarios presented difficulties to obtaining sound evidence of abuse-deceased victims or survivors with decades-old abuse cases and memory lapses.
"The sexual abuse of children by clergy and the responses to that abuse by the bishops have not occurred in a void. It indisputably violates long-established civil and criminal prohibitions as well as centuries-old canonical prohibitions," the report states.
According to the diocese, the report was initially slated for release in the spring of 2019, but the scope of the investigation required more time.