‘Sex cover-up’ cardinal Law dies at age of 86
UNITED States Cardinal Bernard Law, a once-influential church figure forced to resign after failing to stop paedophile priests in one of the biggest crises in American Catholicism, has died, the Vatican said yesterday. He was 86.
The former Boston cardinal had fallen from grace after he allegedly shielded priests involved in a wide-reaching sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church and eclipsed his long and at one time venerated career.
Allegations of molestation and cover-ups seemingly surfaced daily after the scandal erupted in Boston, where Law was forced to resign in 2002 for allegedly protecting predator priests despite evidence they had been abusing youngsters.
In 2004, an investigation established that about 4 400 Catholic priests were paedophiles and that the number of victims from 1950 to 2002 was about 11 000.
The scandal was broken by the Boston Globe newspaper’s Spotlight investigative reporting team, whose dogged uncovering of horrific widespread abuse by priests won a Pulitzer prize and was made into an Oscar-winning film, Spotlight, last year.
Transferred in shame to a low-key position in a Rome basilica, Law had been admitted to hospital recently after a long illness.
He had become one of the main faces of a scandal that has dogged the church for decades – and continues to do so. Earlier this month, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse urged the church to bring in major reforms after the serious failure by Australia’s institutions to protect its most vulnerable citizens.
The scandal there, which found many cases of abuse had taken place in Catholic-managed facilities, has embroiled Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric, George Pell, currently accused of multiple historical sexual offences. Law was accused of moving priest John Geoghan from parish to parish, despite knowing he was believed to have abused up to 130 boys.
It later emerged that Law had also known of dozens of accusations against another priest, Paul Shanley.
The Spotlight reporters discovered the local Catholic hierarchy, led by Law, had covered up sexual abuse by about 90 priests in and around Boston over several decades.
Pope Francis has vowed to take a zerotolerance approach, but has been accused of being too soft on paedophiles.