Cardinal Law Steps Down, Apologizes for ‘Mistakes’

Cardinal Bernard Law, the nation’s most senior Roman Catholic prelate, resigned his post Friday as archbishop of the Boston Archdiocese over the church’s year-old sexual abuse scandal, apologizing and begging forgiveness from “all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes.”

Law’s resignation was accepted personally in the Vatican by a “saddened” Pope John Paul II, who appointed Bishop Richard G. Lennon, a 55-year-old rector of a seminary, to temporarily take over the troubled helm of the fourth-largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the U.S.

“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,” Law said in a statement.

While many hailed the cardinal’s resignation as an important first step, they suggested it was only the beginning of a long recovery process for the archdiocese, where the nationwide priest scandal erupted more than a year ago.

Law has been at the heart of the controversy, accused of covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests and transferring them to other parishes, where they continued to prey on youngsters. The archdiocese has been hit with a wave of lawsuits in recent months, demanding millions of dollars in compensation, and there has been speculation that the venerable Boston institution might take the unprecedented step of declaring bankruptcy to minimize such payments.

On Friday, as news of Law’s resignation spread, attorneys representing hundreds of alleged victims of sexual abuse vowed to press on with lawsuits.

“Just because Cardinal Bernard Law resigned doesn’t mean everything’s OK now. There’s enormous rot, enormous decay within the archdiocese of Boston,” said attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents more than 100 alleged victims of clergy abuse. “This will turn out to be only a cosmetic change unless substantive changes are made in church communities throughout the nation.”

Although the archdiocese had no comment beyond Law’s prepared statement, newly empowered church activists in the Boston area said the church must become more accountable or face similar scandal in the future. And academicians suggested that Law’s resignation would be meaningful only if it led to similar acts of contrition by bishops in other troubled archdioceses.

“It would be naive to presume that the problem is now solved and the crisis is now over,” said Thomas Groome, a professor of religious education at Boston College and author of “What Makes Us Catholic.”

“This issue was far bigger than Cardinal Law and there are deep, pervasive issues to be addressed now by the church nationwide, to reach the root causes of this scandal. Our best hope is that today will be a turning point.”

More than 300 of the 46,000 priests in the U.S. have been removed from duty or resigned this year because of molestation claims; five U.S. bishops have stepped down this year.

Law’s action left a host of questions unanswered. It was not clear, for example, how his resignation would affect a state grand jury probe into church sex abuse, which reportedly has subpoenaed him and other prominent Catholic officials. “This is far beyond one person,” Atty. Gen. Thomas Reilly said on NBC’s “Today” show. “There are other people that knew, other bishops, perhaps even the Vatican, that were aware of the scope of the scandal.”

There was also growing curiosity about the path the church would take under Lennon, a respected but largely unknown prelate. A native of Arlington, Mass., he was elevated last year to bishop. In a statement Friday, he pledged to do all he could “to work toward healing as a church.” Under Vatican rules, Lennon will serve as an apostolic administrator for a maximum of one year, until the pope chooses a successor.

“I don’t envy Lennon one bit,” said Tom Blanchette, a victim of priest sexual abuse. Blanchette, who has become an activist in several church reform groups, stressed that he took no personal joy in Law’s fall from grace. His real concern, he said, is for Lennon, because “in a way, the eyes of the whole nation are really upon him now. He’s got to find a way to clean this mess up.”

Law’s future also remains unclear, though apparently he will remain a cardinal, which means he could take another church post and has the right to vote in a papal election until he turns 80.

Although the Boston Archdiocese has been hit with scandals over sex abuse in the past, the most damaging revelations began surfacing this year. Plaintiffs in several lawsuits alleged that Law and other church officials moved John Geoghan, a former Boston-area priest, from one parish job to another, despite strong evidence that he had sexually abused young males.

Soon after Geoghan was convicted in January and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for indecent assault and battery against a 10-year-old boy, internal church documents from a civil lawsuit suggested that archdiocesan officials had worked to protect the priest and failed to alert authorities to his proclivity for sexual abuse.

Law, 71, vowed in February to never step down from his post, telling parishioners at a Sunday Mass that “when there are problems in the family you don’t walk away.” Yet he was rocked by subsequent allegations in April that Father Paul Shanley routinely had been protected by church leaders and given one new parish job after another, even though his personnel files indicated he had publicly advocated sex between men and boys and was accused of raping young males in the 1980s.

As calls grew for Law to resign, he made a secret trip to the Vatican in April and offered to step down. But the pope refused to accept his resignation, and the prelate returned to Boston, saying he was determined to reform the way the church handled abusive priests.

It all came unglued this week, however, when mainstream Catholic groups and 58 local priests called for his removal, saying he had become an embarrassment.

For some, Law’s travails were a troubling interlude for a church they still enthusiastically support. As she headed for a downtown subway, Stephanie Graff, 20, a Boston University student, said her parents, both devout churchgoers, “just pushed it all aside and stuck to religion.” She added, “I’m going to stick with my religion. It is very conservative and in this liberal country we need that.”

But others said their faith in the church had been shaken.

“I was behind Law all along and ready to stay there,” said Marisa Lee, who was shopping Friday with her daughter Angie, 13. “I send my daughter to Catholic school and my husband and I tithe regularly.”

The last straw for Lee and many other parishioners came 10 days ago, when attorneys representing alleged victims of sex abuse won a court battle forcing the church to release thousands of documents showing the personnel histories of eight priests accused of molesting youngsters. They included revelations about drug use by priests, as well as abuse of young girls and boys. The most damaging evidence, however, suggested that Law had tried to cover up evidence, fended off media inquiries and ran a church that was more concerned with minimizing financial payouts to victims than helping them recover from abuse.

“I can’t say the words I sometimes think about when I’m at church,” Lee said angrily, after sending her daughter into a store. “When the sex and drugs stuff came out, I thought to myself, ‘How could he [Law] protect those people?’ ”

It would have seemed unthinkable in 1984 when Law, formerly the bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo., assumed control of the Boston Archdiocese. He was hailed as an able administrator and a papal loyalist, but also as a man of the people who demonstrated leadership during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The Harvard-educated Law, who worked on voter-registration efforts in Mississippi, was viewed as a leader who could heal the Boston Archdiocese after a series of race riots over school desegregation in the 1970s. He became one of the nation’s most powerful Catholic officials, yet also reached out to poor and homeless people and Boston’s increasing number of immigrant parishioners.

“People might wonder, ‘Where did Cardinal Law go wrong?’ ” said Eugene Kennedy, a former priest, theologian and psychologist at the University of Chicago-Loyola who is also an expert on sexual abuse by clergy.

“And the answer is, he was part of an ongoing effort, sponsored by Pope John Paul II, to restore a rigid hierarchy as the way to govern the church.

“We can see now that this didn’t work, in the abuse scandal, with his efforts to restrict information about abusive priests, the way he tried to protect the church above all else, from the top down,” Kennedy said. “And it was this idea that brought him down. Because people began to stand up and say, ‘No more!’ ”

As the Boston church abuse scandal expanded, Catholics banded together into a proliferation of grass-roots organizations demanding a bigger say in church affairs. Voices of the Faithful, a group of mainstream Catholics who until recently had not sought Law’s resignation, said the cardinal’s departure could be a purifying act if it leads to meaningful reform in Boston and other archdioceses.

Law’s resignation “is a sad but necessary step in the healing process,” said Jim Post, the organization’s president. “This is not a joyous time for us, and our hearts are heavy with sadness. The archdiocese faces an enormous challenge now, because healing requires listening to one another -- to survivors and their families, to priests, the religious and the laity.”

Members of another group, the Boston Priest’s Forum, voiced similar hope Friday that Lennon would usher in a new period of accountability. As they met in the basement of a Newton, Mass., church, several members tried to make sense of the day’s dizzying events and a tumultuous year in their parishes.

“What was revealed 10 days ago just pushed people over the edge,” said Father Walter J. Woods, the pastor in Acton, Mass. “My people had filled me with their anger, their confusion, their frustration and their heart-stopping anxiety for their kids. It was just gross.”

For Father Austin H. Flemming, pastor in Concord, Mass., the lesson of Law’s fall was that the cardinal had drifted too far from his flock. He was preoccupied with scandal, and no longer heard what was in people’s hearts, Flemming said.

Looking ahead to the holidays, the priest said he hadn’t yet written his Christmas Day homily, and didn’t really know what he was going to say.

“I suspect there will be relief that day, and people are going to want to know what is coming next,” Flemming said. “But that I cannot tell them.”