Cardinal Bernard Law
Former Catholic Archbishop of Boston forced to resign over his abysmal handling of the scandal of child abuse among his clergy
CARDINAL BERNARD LAW, the former Archbishop of Boston, who has died aged 86, was one of the most influential prelates in the Roman Catholic Church in America, whose forced resignation, in the midst of the child abuse scandal, became emblematic of the Church’s catastrophic failure to deal effectively with the crisis.
From occupying one of the pinnacles of Catholic power in America, Law became a disdained symbol of a Church that could no longer be trusted, though he retained to the end the confidence of many who had known him and worked closely with him.
Bernard Francis Law was born in the Mexican city of Torreón on November 4 1931. His father was in the US Air Force and he enjoyed a peripatetic childhood, in accordance with his father’s postings, which included places as diverse as New York, Florida, Georgia, and Barranquilla, Colombia, as well as St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, where he graduated from Charlotte Amalie High School.
As a teenager, Bernard took a holiday job with the local paper, the Virgin Islands Daily News. The young Law had a profound enthusiasm for the written word and for poetry: as a youth he was lucky enough to hear TS Eliot give a public reading from his works, an experience he treasured.
After high school, Law went to Harvard University, where he read History. On leaving, and deciding to study for the priesthood, he was sent to study Philosophy in a seminary in Louisiana from 1953 to 1955, followed by six years of Theology in the Josephinum Pontifical College in Columbus, Ohio. He was ordained priest in 1961 for the diocese of Natchez-jackson in Mississippi, a part of the country where there were few Catholics and which was far from the traditional centres of Catholic influence.
He spent two years as a curate, in the parish of Vicksburg, but was almost immediately made editor of the diocesan newspaper, the Mississippi Register. In his editorial role Law took a strong line in defence of civil rights, and became closely involved in the civil rights movement, which won him praise from some, and hostility and even death threats from others. His civil rights activism brought Law into contact with the leaders of other churches, and he became noted for his ecumenical work, which marked him out as a pioneer amongst Roman Catholics, who were only just then discovering ecumenism in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.
As a result of this work, in 1968 the United States bishops appointed Law as the executive director of their committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. From this position, five years later, he was raised to the episcopate as bishop of Springfield-cape Girardeau, a small diocese in the state of Missouri, the home state, he was pleased to note, of TS Eliot, who had been born in nearby St Louis.
The Catholics of Missouri made up no more than 5 per cent of the population, and Law continued his ecumenical efforts. He also made a name for himself by inviting some 166 members of a Vietnamese religious order, who had fled Vietnam as boat people, to settle in the diocese. Law was now invited to be part of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, and later to act as a consultor to its Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.
In 1981 the Vatican turned to Law for help in setting up a programme to facilitate the reception into the Catholic Church of convert priests from the United States Episcopal Church. In its first year, 64 clergy became Catholic, some of whom were married, bringing married priests in to the Roman Catholic fold in America for the first time.
After 11 years in the backwater of Springfield, in 1984 Law was catapulted to national prominence by being appointed Archbishop of Boston. He was delighted to return to the diocese that contained Harvard, and the city that was the intellectual capital of America, closely associated with Eliot, as well as being the stronghold of Irish-american Catholicism. “After Boston, there’s only heaven,” he remarked on his appointment.
A little over a year later, he was made a cardinal, and given titular responsibility for Santa Susanna, the American Church in Rome. Still in early fifties, Bernard Law was now one of the most important and high-profile prelates in the United States.
Bernard Law was a bishop in the mould of the Pope who had raised him to Boston, John Paul II. Like the Polish Pontiff, he was keen to preserve Catholic doctrine, and was one of the chief collaborators on the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated in 1992. Liberal American Catholics who wanted change on matters such as the ordination of women found in him a stern opponent. Catholics of a more conservative bent appreciated him, and he was widely liked for his affability and charm, reminiscent of an old school parish priest.
He was quick to visit the Kennedys, famous Bostonians, when tragedy struck their family; but there were many other families who received his pastoral care and attention which never reached the newspapers. In addition, Law was known for his devotion to prayer.
However, his management of his priests in one of the largest archdioceses in America left a great deal to be desired, as events were to show. Nemesis came in the shape of Fr John Geoghan, a priest who had a long history of abusing boys prior to Law’s appointment to Boston. Shortly after Law’s arrival in Boston he removed Geoghan from his ministry in one parish, where complaints had been made about his behaviour, and assigned him to a new parish, where the priest had full access to children.
Geoghan would go on to offend again, despite attempts to treat him for paedophilia. He was only brought to justice in 2001, by which time it was clear that Law had been aware of his record and had continued to place him in parishes, thus allowing other children to be abused. Law was seen as being morally responsible for failing to stop Geoghan’s abuse, and, as some would have it, legally responsible as well.
It was at this point that the Boston Globe entered the scene. Its respected “Spotlight” unit conducted a far-reaching investigation into numerous cases of paedophilia among the clergy in Boston, the results of which were devastating, and which would later be the inspiration of the Oscar-winning film Spotlight.
It became clear that the Geoghan case was far from unique, and with the archdiocese facing numerous lawsuits and possible bankruptcy, Law’s position became untenable, and the credibility of the Church suffered a severe pounding. Law resigned on December 13 2002, in the wake of a letter from 58 of his own priests asking him to do so.
In his resignation statement he said: “It is my fervent prayer that this action may help the Archdiocese of Boston to experience the healing, reconciliation and unity which are so desperately needed. To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes I both apologise and from them beg forgiveness.”
Law was now one of the most hated men in America, and the focus of intense anger. There were repeated calls for his arrest and imprisonment, and for his expulsion from the priesthood. It was also alleged that his resignation had had to be forced from him.
While it was undeniable that the catastrophe of child abuse in Boston had been made infinitely worse by the Church’s abysmal handling of the crisis, with a pattern of institutional cover-up, there were some quiet voices that saw Law as something less than monstrous. In his defence, it was pointed out that the management of the archdiocese was not his sole responsibility, and that he had been given very poor advice on how to handle paedophiles, much of which had failed to point to the near-certainty of their reoffending and the compulsive nature of the condition.
Law was the first to deal with this problem on such a mighty scale, and his actions, his defenders argued, were the result of naivety rather than malice.
The disgraced Cardinal now left Boston, it was assumed to avoid arrest. In July 2003 the state attorney general published a report entitled Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston which castigated Law’s handling of the crisis, saying that “the Archdiocese has shown an institutional reluctance to adequately address the problem and, in fact, made choices that allowed the abuse to continue”. At the same time, it was clear that Law had not tried to obstruct justice or broken any laws.
After spending some time quietly in America, as a chaplain to a small convent in Maryland, in May 2004 Cardinal Law received a new, largely ceremonial, appointment from Pope John Paul II, to be Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome.
In addition to this position, Law, as a Cardinal resident in Rome, continued to serve on several Vatican commissions and congregations, including the Congregation for Bishops, which oversees the appointment of new bishops around the world. Law’s voice was thought to be highly influential in the creation of new American bishops.
The elderly cardinal lived in a flat next-door to Saint Mary Major’s, one of Rome’s most beautiful and ancient churches. Because the basilica and adjoining properties were extra-territorial this gave rise to the baseless rumour that Law was sheltering in the Vatican to evade American justice. In fact, Law was a frequent guest at parties in the US Embassy in Rome: a short man, he was gifted with a sense of humour.
In his retirement he was accompanied by his former secretary from Boston, Monsignor Paul Mcinerny. Law voted in the conclave of 2005 that elected Benedict XVI as Pope, and he also celebrated one of the masses of requiem for John Paul II, to much popular fury.
In 2011, on reaching the age of 80, as is customary, Cardinal Law relinquished all responsibilities in the Church, and left Saint Mary Major’s to take up residence in a flat in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, another Vatican property in the centre of Rome.
Cardinal Bernard Law, born November 4 1931, died December 20 2017