Cardinal Admits Not Checking Files

Cardinal Bernard Law acknowledged having promoted a priest, who was later charged with multiple counts of child rape, without examining his personnel records, according to transcripts of court testimony released Tuesday.

In videotaped and written records of depositions taken here in June, Law asserted repeatedly that he relied on advisors in approving parish appointments, including placements for Father Paul Shanley, whose records detailed sexual abuse complaints from as early as 1966. Law said it would have been “helpful” if the information about Shanley had been “readily available.”

The wide-ranging transcripts placed Law--once described by Father Richard McBrien of the University of Notre Dame as “the most influential bishop in the United States with the Vatican”--in the often-uncomfortable position of defendant. Law, archbishop of Boston, is shown taking the same oath as any other citizen called to testify, and, like many witnesses, sometimes changing his answers.

The long-awaited court records address topics ranging from Law’s knowledge of pedophilia in the priesthood to his views on protecting the church at the expense of children who may have been molested. Law also was asked about individual priests charged with sexual abuse, including one whom Law returned to his home parish without notifying parishioners that the priest had undergone psychiatric treatment for pedophilia.

Law also was asked about a comment he made invoking “the power of God” upon the news media following a high-profile clerical abuse case here 10 years ago.

“I don’t think it would be a bad thing to do, even today, to call down God’s power on the news media,” Law testified in June. “I think that would be very good.”

Law had no comment Tuesday about the transcripts. Calls to Donna M. Morrissey, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, were not returned.

Attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., representing an alleged Shanley abuse victim and his family, said he could not comment on the substance of the cardinal’s testimony. But, MacLeish said, “this is a very, very important subject. It goes well beyond the Catholic church. It also shows how we deal with children in our society.”

The documents and videotapes were released as Law resumed his closed-door depositions in civil suits involving sexual abuse claims against Shanley. The 71-year-old retired priest was returned to Boston in May from California, where he had been assigned to a parish in San Bernardino despite numerous complaints against him in Massachusetts and elsewhere.

Law also was deposed in the spring in a civil suit brought by alleged victims of former Boston priest John J. Geoghan. Documents released in connection with Geoghan’s January child molestation trial set off the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

But Law and the Boston archdiocese have remained at the epicenter. The nation’s senior Catholic prelate, who was sometimes mentioned before the scandal as a potential candidate to be the first American pope, has been forced to mount aggressive legal strategies as a defendant in a cluster of embarrassing lawsuits.

Law, 66, also has been under fire for backing out of a $20-million to $30-million settlement with alleged Geoghan victims that was nearly a year in the making.

More than 200 pages of transcripts released Tuesday show that the June session with Law began on a cordial note.

“If I refer to you as cardinal, is that acceptable, your eminence?” MacLeish asked.

“Sure,” Law replied.

But soon enough MacLeish was interrogating the cardinal about his knowledge of sexual abuse by priests. After first testifying that child molestation was not on his “radar screen” when he worked in Mississippi in the early 1970s, Law conceded he knew of a priest involved in “boundary violations” with a child from the local diocese.

Law agreed, however, that in 1973 he understood child abuse to be a sin.

“Certainly it was a sin, yes,” the cardinal stated.

Asked about the policy of his church regarding the protection of children in abuse cases, Law said, “It does seem to me that, in retrospect, we tended to view cases in isolation and view the component parts of these cases. So one would deal with a victim. One would deal with a priest.”

When MacLeish queried the cardinal about whether one focus of this policy was to avoid scandal in the church, Law responded, “That’s correct.”

He did not deny promoting Father Daniel Graham, then a priest in Quincy, Mass., to vicar, although Graham had admitted molesting a child.

“He was allowed to continue, yes, after intervention by a medical source,” Law said.

He also said that “looking back on it now,” he erred in not informing Graham’s parishioners of the charge against the priest.

The cardinal maintained he did not recall seeing a 1985 letter about Shanley, a popular so-called street priest in Boston. The letter said Shanley delivered a speech at an organizational meeting for the North American Man-Boy Love Assn., declaring that “when adults have sex with children, the children seduced them.”

MacLeish, who charges that Shanley abused some of his clients after Law assigned him to a Boston parish, then showed the cardinal a letter from a subordinate saying that Law had received the correspondence about Shanley. The cardinal countered that church records were housed in “a lot of disparate places” and that he did not know about sexual abuse allegations against Shanley until 1993.

Shanley is in a Boston jail, awaiting trial on at least six counts of child rape. He is accused of molesting boys 6 to 15 years old at St. Jean’s parish in suburban Newton from 1979 to 1989.

As evidence of the extent of the sexual abuse scandal, law enforcement officials in Boston announced Tuesday that still another priest will be arraigned this week on child rape charges. Since January, the Boston archdiocese has furnished officials with the names of more than 100 priests accused of child molestation over 40 years.