NEW YORK: Cardinal Bernard Law, for years one of the most senior and influential Catholic prelates in the United States until he resigned in disgrace for covering up decades of sexual abuse, died on Wednesday. He was 86.
The Harvard-educated church leader, who met US presidents and promoted social justice for immigrants and the poor, died in Rome, where he moved after his 2002 resignation as the abuse scandal unleashed a major crisis in the Catholic Church that continues to reverberate around the world today.
Evidence that the former archbishop of Boston had protected paedophile priests for years and hushed up their abuse of children to protect the Church hierarchy shattered a once venerated career.
Law died on Wednesday after a long illness and had been hospitalized in Rome, the Vatican announced. Pope Francis paid his respects without mentioning the sex abuse scandal, saying: "I raise prayers for the repose of his soul."
But in Boston, Law's death reopened old wounds and his successor Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley apologized to sexual abuse victims.
"To those men and women, I offer my sincere apologies for the harm they suffered, my continued prayers and my promise that the Archdiocese will support them in their effort to achieve healing," he said in a statement.
The child molestation scandal hit Boston like an avalanche in January 2002, with hundreds of people coming forward to claim they had been abused by priests. The mushrooming scandal ultimately saw Law succumb to overwhelming pressure and resign.
The scandal became the subject of the Oscar-winning 2015 Hollywood movie "Spotlight" centered on how the Boston Globe newspaper investigated and uncovered the scandal -- work that earned investigative reporters at the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize.
- 'Time to refocus' -
Law was initially accused of moving priest John Geoghan from parish to parish, despite knowing that Geoghan was believed to have abused up to 130 boys.
The Spotlight reporters later discovered that the local Catholic hierarchy, led by Law, systematically covered up sexual abuse by some 90 priests over decades.
Law, who moved first to a convent in Maryland, was transferred in shame to a low-key position in a Rome basilica in 2004. He is to be buried in Rome.
"No words can convey the pain these survivors and their loved ones suffered," said SNAP, the largest US advocacy group of survivors of institutional sexual abuse.
"This celebratory focus on abuse enablers like Law must end. It is time for the Vatican to refocus on change: protecting children and those who have been hurt," said the organization's Joelle Casteix.
Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who specializes in sexual abuse cases, told AFP that Law's death "reminds many victims of pain related with clergy sexual abuse."
"Cardinal Law was an individual who allowed innocent children to be sexually abused... Cardinal Law chose to turn his back on innocent children," he said.
In 2015, the National Catholic Reporter said the US Catholic church had incurred nearly $4 billion in costs related to the abuse crisis over the past 65 years, well over the nearly $3 billion figure that has been most widely cited.
- Authoritarian -
Neither has the clergy abuse crisis ended. New victims continue to come forward and while Pope Francis has vowed "zero tolerance," he has also been accused of being too soft on pedophiles, extending to them a general policy of mercy he is promoting.
Earlier this month an Australian Royal Commission urged the church to implement major reforms after a scandal embroiled Australia's most senior Catholic cleric George Pell, accused of multiple historical sexual offenses.
Born in Torreon, Mexico on November 4, 1931 to an Air Force colonel, Law grew up on military bases before studying medieval history at Harvard University.
He began priesthood studies in 1953 and was ordained in Mississippi in 1961, becoming known nationally for his ecumenical work on social welfare and civil rights.
In 1984 the pope declared him archbishop of Boston -- at the time the third-largest diocese in the United States -- where he was known as a conservative and authoritarian leader, who nonetheless built bridges with the Jewish community.
He remained faithful to the strict hierarchies of the church and was a staunch opponent of abortion and birth control, as well as the possibility of ordaining women or loosening traditional celibacy rules of the priesthood.
"I think a lot of us have crossed a bridge here, and forgiven Cardinal Law's decisions," Boston businessman, philanthropist and former Law confidant Jack Connors, told National Public Radio.
"But I don't think many of us are ever going to forget it."
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