PHILADELPHIA — Retired Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua will be examined by a prosecution expert in the coming weeks to see if he is competent to testify in a criminal priest-abuse case, a judge ruled Friday.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia says the 92-year-old cardinal is suffering from cancer and dementia and should not be dragged into the trial of Monsignor William Lynn, his longtime secretary for clergy. Prosecutors want to preserve his testimony before the blockbuster March trial.

Bevilacqua was the bishop of the Pittsburgh Diocese from 1983 to 1987.

Lynn, 60, is the first Roman Catholic Church official in the United States charged criminally for his administrative actions. He faces up to 14 years in prison if convicted of child endangerment and conspiracy charges.

His four co-defendants — two priests, a former priest and an ex-teacher — are charged with rape. Three of them are accused of raping the same child, starting when the victim was a 10-year-old altar boy in northeast Philadelphia, according to a February grand jury report. The fourth co-defendant is charged with raping a second boy from a suburban parish.

Two pivotal issues that will largely shape the trial could yield explosive pretrial hearings.

The first is whether Bevilacqua will be ordered to testify. Two Philadelphia grand juries excoriated Bevilacqua and his successor, Justin Rigali, for their handling of priest-abuse complaints, and went so far as to contemplate charging them with crimes. Neither panel took that step.

But Lynn’s lawyers — quoting at times from the prosecution’s own grand-jury reports — argue that their client was acting on orders from Bevilacqua, whom he served as secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004.