Death of disgraced Boston cardinal

Cardinal Bernard Law. Photo / AP

Cardinal Bernard Law, the Boston archbishop who became one of the most influential Catholic leaders in the United States before resigning in 2002 amid revelations that he and other prelates had known for years of rampant child molestation by parish priests, a scandal that has been called the church's darkest crisis of the modern era, has died at 86.

His death was reported by AP, citing an unnamed official of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Law was recently hospitalised in Rome. No other details were available.

For more than half a century, Law dedicated himself to the church, an institution that became his home after his itinerant upbringing as the son of a commercial and military aviator. As he rose from parish priest to Boston archbishop — the steward of one of the most Catholic American cities — he promoted traditional Catholic doctrine and envisioned the church as a guarantor of social justice in the 20th century.

But controversy engulfed Law in the early 2000s, when a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by the Boston Globe, later dramatised in the Academy Award-winning film Spotlight, led to revelations that church officials had covered up sexual abuse in the priesthood for decades by shuffling alleged offenders among parishes.

Law was never accused of committing sexual abuse, and he denounced the offence as a "terrible evil." But for many, he became a symbol of the church's failure to protect the young from priests who exploited the trust that traditionally accompanies their role. "While I would hope that it would be understood that I never intended to place a priest in a position where I felt he would be a risk to children," Law said in an apology in 2002, "the fact of the matter remains that I did assign priests who had committed sexual abuse."

In 2003, then-Massachusetts attorney-general Thomas Reilly concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the Boston archdiocese or its leaders. But his office released a report on the matter, declaring that "the mistreatment of children was so massive and so prolonged that it borders on the unbelievable". Law, the report found, "had direct knowledge of the scope, duration and severity of the crisis experienced by children in the Archdiocese; he participated directly in crucial decisions concerning the assignment of abusive priests."

Law stepped down as archbishop in 2002, and later moved to Rome, where he served, until shortly before his 80th birthday, as archpriest of a basilica within the territory of Vatican City.Washington Post