A Law unto himself? US cardinal fights for survival

When His Eminence Cardinal Bernard Law of the Catholic archdiocese of Boston was spotted dining in the Ristorante Cecilia Metella, one of Rome's best and most discreet restaurants, with Bishop James Harvey, the Vatican's highest-ranking American, on Sunday night when he should have been celebrating mass in Massachusetts, the chances are they were discussing survival. Top of the agenda must have been the cardinal's future, closely followed by that of the Catholic church in the US as currently constituted.

Back home, outside Holy Cross cathedral on a wintry Advent Sunday in the US's most ostentatiously Catholic city, protesters outnumbered worshippers two to one. Their banners ran: "Throw the bum in jail" and "Bernard Law, you are fired."

Cardinal Law, one of the American church's most senior, orthodox and conservative figures, stands accused of covering up a burgeoning list of priestly scandals, revealing sexual corruption, paedophilia, drug dealing and violence on an almost Rabelaisian scale. England's cardinal, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, may have expressed contrition on television last week for earlier sins and omissions, but his problems pale into near-insignificance compared with Law's.

A 2,200-page dossier of secret reports and memoranda published last week after a court overruled the archdiocese at the behest of victims of priestly abuse revealed not only a catalogue of crime over many years but also that the cardinal - in post since 1984 - and his predecessors not only knew of it, but covered it up.

Among those emerging into the light last week was Father James Foley of St Joseph's church, appropriately enough, in Salem, who was finally suspended on Friday, nine years after admitting privately that he had fathered two children in the 1960s by a lobotomised woman who later died of a drug overdose while in his company. He admitted that he had escaped from the house and not called for emergency help until too late.

Under investigation in 1994, Fr Foley wrote to his bishop: "How can the church suffer scandal from an episode that will possibly never be revealed?"

When the Boston Globe caught up with him last week, he admitted: "It's all true," then added defiantly: "Yes, I made mistakes when I was younger but I have led a proper priestly life since then. I should be judged by my whole career."

Or what about Father Richard Buntel, known as Father Pothead and the Blow King of Malden, who supplied cocaine to young parishioners in return for sex with them - a detail known to the authorities for more than 11 years before they sent him on administrative leave?

Or Father Robert Meffan who enticed teenaged girls preparing to become nuns to have sex with him with the promise that they were about to witness "the second coming of Christ"? He got a letter on retirement from Cardinal Law expressing true gratitude for his priestly care and ministry, even though he had much earlier been warned that the priest was so unbalanced "he could really harm us".

Fr Meffan too showed little remorse when approached by the Globe: "What I was trying to show them is that Christ is human... I felt that by having this little bit of intimacy with them that this is what it would be like with Christ. They were wonderful girls."

Then there was Father Thomas Forry who threw his housekeeper downstairs and had a 10-year affair with a married woman, or Robert Burns, for whom the church has paid out more than $2m (£1.3m) to the young men he molested.

The revelations cap a year in which the US church has been pushed increasingly on the defensive over its record and, as elsewhere across the western world, has seen its authority undermined by a stream of revelations about clergy misconduct. Its legal liabilities from lawsuits by victims may top $1bn.

Plaintiffs

Nowhere more so than in Boston, which last week admitted it was considering applying for bankruptcy as a tactic to head off the 400 plaintiffs queuing up to sue. It has already paid $10m to settle claims with 86 plaintiffs and faces further liabilities heading towards another $100m.

No wonder the faithful feel betrayed. Local Protestant churches have given permission for dissident groups to meet quietly on their own premises when their own churches have banned them.

Outside Father Buntel's church in Malden on Sunday, William Minigan told reporters: "Our leaders have lied to us (about what they have) covered up for years. We've been betrayed. Our trust has been abandoned."

A petition circulating among the priests of the diocese - which has already been signed by 50 of them - calls for Cardinal Law's resignation: "The events of recent months and in particular of these last few days make it clear to us that your position as our bishop is so compromised that it is no longer possible for you to exercise the spiritual leadership required."

Cardinal Law has insisted that he will not be pushed out and, in his public statements, has shown little appreciation of the damage being caused.

With the release of last week's documents however, his earlier statements that he had never made an effort to shift a problem from one place to the next and that it was never his intention to put a child at risk have been shown to be obtuse at best. He slipped quietly out of Boston and headed to the Vatican at the weekend in order to discuss whether his diocese should become the first in North America to file for bankruptcy.

His own position must be under threat, too. But John Paul II, elderly and infirm, is known to believe that the crisis is more about western decadence than systemic problems within his church.

He also knows that if Bernard Law resigns, there are a further seven US cardinals and 16 archbishops in a similar position.