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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Cardinal Law is dead

When I first saw the news last night, I was tempted to post this song ...



Here's why ...

The New Yorker: The Death of Cardinal Bernard Law and the Legacy of Clergy Sex Abuse

In the spring of 1989, a group of black-clad clergy gathered to bury one of their own—a Boston priest named Father Joseph Birmingham. Presiding at the funeral was their leader, Cardinal Bernard Law, who died himself on Wednesday, in Rome. As the obsequies for Birmingham drew to a close and the crowd began to disperse, Law was confronted by a man named Thomas Blanchette. He identified himself as having been sexually abused as a child by Birmingham, who would ultimately be accused of having molested more than forty boys. In 2002, Blanchette told the Boston Globe what happened next; Law “laid his hands on my head for two or three minutes. And then he said this: ‘I bind you under the power of the confessional never to speak a word of this to another.’ ”...

Cardinal Law was in charge when the truth about the covered-up clergy child sex abuse scandal in Boston was broken in 2002 by The Boston Globe (they won a Pulitzer prize for this investigative reporting and a recent Best Picture Academy award-winning film was made about the topic: Spotlight).

The situation was so bad that 58 priests in Boston actually wrote a letter to Law telling him to step down. But when he scuttled off to Rome, he met with no punishment, not even a harsh word of criticism from the Vatican. Instead he was rewarded with the top job at one of the most prestigious churches in Rome, the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. People hoped that when Francis was made pope, he would get rid of Law. But though Francis did visit Law's church on his first day as pope, he didn't fire him, he had a friendly chat with him instead.

And now that he's dead, the Vatican has created more rage with its decision to honor Law with a state funeral, Pope Francis presiding ... Pope Francis presides over the final rites of Cardinal Law’s funeral Mass

Read more ...

- Bernard Law, a cardinal of scandal and disgrace by Fr. Thomas Reese SJ

- From Cardinal Law to Harvey Weinstein, how ‘Spotlight’ scandal paved way for #MeToo movement

- The Hurt Is Still There’: Abuse Survivors Grapple With Cardinal’s Death

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