A day like any other at Holy Cross Cathedral

At morning Mass yesterday at Holy Cross Cathedral — the same parish where controversial Cardinal Bernard Law served as archbishop of Boston for nearly two decades — the faithful did not acknowledge his death.

Cathedral rector the Rev. Kevin J. O’Leary presided over the 19-minute Holy Communion for 16 multiracial parishioners in a base- ment sanctuary, where there is seating for hundreds.

A soft whistling could be heard in the church’s heating pipes as O’Leary spoke surrounded by flickering candles and to the side of an indoor manger scene. Law’s successor, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, did not make an appearance.

Many lingered in Our Lady’s Chapel’s pews, heads bowed in prayer, after O’Leary left hastily. The majority declined to comment on the 86-year-old cardinal’s death.

Parishioner Russell Baldwin, who is also a volunteer groundskeeper at the cathedral, said, “It was a sad period in Boston, in the country.”

Law’s name is rarely mentioned at the cathedral anymore, according to Baldwin — something he owed more to the passing of time than Law’s shameful role in the cover-up of the priest sex abuse scandal that forced his resignation 15 years ago this month.

“It’s been so long. Some of the younger parishioners here this morning didn’t even know who Cardinal Law was,” Baldwin remarked. “Time does that, as we all know.”

Baldwin said his thoughts of the day turned to the victims of molestation by priests.

“I don’t know if it’s my place to ask them to forgive, but not forgiving doesn’t have any affect on anybody except us who don’t try to work it out,” he said.

“Hate and resentment only tears us up more. But that’s not at all to dismiss the seriousness of what happened. I don’t mean that at all.

“It was a bad time,” he reiterated, “and there’s a lot of people still hurting.”

‘There’s a lot of people still hurting.’ — RUSSELL BALDWIN, parishioner and volunteer groundskeeper