Bernard Law, the former Boston cardinal who resigned in disgrace during the church sex abuse scandal, has died, the Vatican has confirmed.
Law died in Rome, where he served as archpriest of the Papal Liberian Basilica of St. Mary Major after he was forced to resign as archbishop of Boston in 2002.
The scandal broke when it was revealed by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative reporting team that Law and other bishops before him had covered for pedophile priests in the Boston Archdiocese.
The Spotlight team’s uncovering of widespread child abuse by the Catholic clergy in the Boston Archdiocese won a Pulitzer prize. The dramatization of the team’s investigation, a 2015 movie also called “Spotlight,” won the 2016 Best Picture Academy Award, bringing the story to a much wider audience.
The Vatican issued a press release early Wednesday confirming the death of Cardinal Bernard Law, with one line reading “Cardinal Bernard Law died early this morning after a long illness.”
Law never faced criminal sanctions for his role in allowing abusive priests to remain in church parishes. The scandal reverberated through the church, exposing similar allegations worldwide that compromised its moral authority and led to years of multimillion-dollar settlements. To his detractors, his second career at the Vatican was a slap in the face to victims of church sex abuse, one that further undermined the church’s legitimacy.
Source: CNN
