Bernard Francis Law
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| Bernard Francis Cardinal Law | |
| Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus of Boston | |
| See | Boston (Emeritus) |
|---|---|
| Enthroned | 11 January 1984 |
| Ended | 13 December 2002 |
| Predecessor | Humberto Cardinal Medeiros |
| Successor | Seán Cardinal O'Malley |
| Created Cardinal | 25 May 1985 |
| Other | Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau |
| Born | 4 November 1931 Mexico |
Bernard Francis Cardinal Law (born 4 November 1931 in Torreón, Mexico) is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the Archbishop emeritus of Boston, member of the Roman Curia, archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and titular Cardinal Priest of Santa Susanna, the American Catholic church in Rome.
He resigned as archbishop of Boston on 13 December 2002, in response to the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Law, an only child, was born in Torreón, Mexico on 4 November 1931. His father, a career Air Force officer, was stationed at the Torreón United States Air Force base, making Bernard a so-called "military brat". His mother, Helen, was a convert to Catholicism from Presbyterianism.
He attended schools in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Barranquilla (Colombia), and graduated from Charlotte Amalie High School in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
He graduated from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a major in medieval history, before entering priesthood studies at St. Joseph Seminary in St. Benedict, Louisiana, from 1953 to 1955, and the Pontifical College Josephinum in Worthington, Ohio, from 1955 to 1961.
On May 21, 1961 Law was ordained a priest and worked as a priest of Natchez-Jackson, Mississippi. He served two years as an assistant pastor, and was made the editor of the Mississippi Register, the diocesan newspaper. He also held several other diocesan posts from 1963 to 1968, including director of the family life bureau and spiritual director of the minor seminary.
[edit] Civil rights activism
Law was a civil rights activist, and took part in some of the civil rights marches of the times[when?][citation needed]. He was a member of the Mississippi Leadership Conference and Mississippi Human Relations Council. For his civil rights activities and his strong editorial positions on civil rights in the Mississippi Register, he received death threats[citation needed].
Law received national attention for his work for ecumenism in the Deep South in the 1960s and in 1968 he was tapped for his first national post, as executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs[citation needed].
[edit] Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau
Pope Paul VI named him bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau on October 22, 1973 and he was ordained as a bishop on 5 December 1973. Law's predecessor in Springfield-Cape Girardeau was William Baum, another future cardinal.
In 1975, he made the news when he arranged for the resettlement in his diocese of one hundred and sixty-six Vietnamese refugees who had arrived in the United States, and who were members of the Vietnamese religious order, the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix.
In continuing his ecumenical work, Law formed the Missouri Christian Leadership Conference. He was made a member of the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and served from 1976 to 1981 as a consultor to its Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. In the late 1970s, Law would also chair the U.S. bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.
In 1981, Law was named the Vatican delegate to develop and oversee a program instituted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in which U.S. Episcopal priests would be accepted into the Catholic priesthood. In the program's first year sixty-four Episcopal priests applied for acceptance. This brought married priests with their families into U.S. Roman Catholic dioceses for the first time (Eastern Catholic Churches, in keeping with their own traditions, have ordained married men to the priesthood for centuries).
In this period Law was also a pro-life activist and spoke out against abortion. During the 1984 presidential race, when Geraldine Ferraro, who was a Roman Catholic, was the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Law and then Archbishop of New York John O'Connor both denounced her support of abortion rights for women. Law called abortion "the critical issue of the moment".
[edit] Archbishop of Boston
| Styles of Bernard Francis Law |
|
 |
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| Reference style | His Eminence |
| Spoken style | Your Eminence |
| Informal style | Cardinal |
| See | Boston (Emeritus) |
On January 11, 1984, Cardinal Law was appointed Archbishop of Boston, prelate bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston by Pope John Paul II. He was installed as Archbishop on March 23, 1984.
Only a little over a year later on May 25, 1985, he was elevated in consistory as a member of the College of Cardinals, where he was also appointed the Cardinal-Priest of the Titulus S. Susannae.
It was his speech at the 1985 Synod of Bishops marking the 20th anniversary of the end of the Second Vatican Council, that led to development of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in which Law oversaw the first draft of the English translation.
In the mid-1980s, Law chaired the bishops' Committee on Pastoral Research and Practices at the time it distributed a major study report on Freemasonry. The bishops' report concluded that "the principles and basic rituals of Masonry embody a naturalistic religion, active participation in which is incompatible with Christian faith and practice."
In 1989 and 1990 Law visited Cuba. He met with Fidel Castro in 1990 and in January 1998 he led a delegation of two hundred and forty Bostonians to Cuba during the papal visit there. In 2000 he was part of an inter-American delegation of bishops that met with Castro for more than four hours.
During his time as Archbishop he continued to be a constant advocate of the right to life of the unborn. However, in 1995, when John Salvi attacked two Boston abortion clinics, he urged a moratorium on clinic protests.
[edit] Sexual abuse scandal
Cardinal Law's reign as Archbishop of Boston began in popularity but quickly declined into turbulence towards the end of his term. Allegations and reports of sexual misconduct by priests of the Archdiocese of Boston became widespread causing Roman Catholics in other dioceses of the United States to investigate similar situations there. Cardinal Law's actions and inactions prompted public scrutiny of all members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the steps they had taken in response to past and current allegations of sexual misconduct at the hands of priests. The events in the Archdiocese of Boston exploded into a national Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
Grassroots public advocacy groups like Voice of the Faithful focused on Cardinal Law after documents revealed his extensive role in covering up incidents of sexual misconduct of his priests. For example, Cardinal Law moved Paul Shanley and John Geoghan from parish to parish within the diocese despite repeated allegations of molestation of children under the priests' care. Later, it was discovered that Father Shanley even advocated the North American Man-Boy Love Association. The cardinal in questioning restated the official Vatican position of what has been termed a "sex abuse scandal" in American; that when a priest committed a sex crime the cardinal said his practice was to seek the analysis of psychiatrists, clinicians, and therapists in residential treatment centers before deciding whether a priest accused of sexually abusing a child should be returned to the pulpit.
In 1987, after at least 23 years of child molesting by Father Joseph Birmingham during which time he was shuffled to various parishes, the mother of an altar boy at St. Anns wrote to Law asking if Birmingham had a history of molesting children. Cardinal Law wrote back "I contacted Father Birmingham. ... He assured me there is absolutely no factual basis to your concern regarding your son and him. From my knowledge of Father Birmingham and my relationship with him, I feel he would tell me the truth and I believe he is speaking the truth in this matter." [1]
As a result of the unlawful sex, the Archdiocese of Boston lost millions of dollars in fines and settlements. It also funded the legal defense of accused priests. The archdiocese slipped into large financial deficits[citation needed]. The Archdiocese closed sixty-five parishes before Cardinal Law stepped down from service. Law's name has become synonymous with the nationwide Church scandal.
In response to the scandal, over fifty priests signed a letter declaring no confidence in Cardinal Law and asking him to resign - something that had never before happened in the history of the Catholic Church in America[citation needed].
[edit] Resignation
Law submitted his resignation to the Vatican and Pope John Paul II accepted his resignation on December 13, 2002.
In a statement and apology Cardinal Law said, "To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes I both apologize and from them beg forgiveness". He remained cardinal, which is a separate appointment, and participated in the 2005 papal conclave.
After his resignation, John Paul appointed Law to several authoritative positions in Rome and the Vatican.[2] He is currently the archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. He is also a member of the Congregations of Oriental Churches, Clergy, Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Evangelisation of Peoples, Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Catholic Education, Bishops as well as the Pontifical Council for the Family. This is a large number of organisations for any cardinal to be involved in and is partly due to residing in Rome.
[edit] Episcopal Succession
| Episcopal Lineage | |
| Consecrated by: | Joseph Bernard Brunini |
| Date of consecration: | December 5, 1973 |
| Consecrator of | |
|---|---|
| Bishop | Date of consecration |
| Tomás Andrés Mauro Muldoon | October 8, 1984 |
| Robert Joseph Banks | September 19, 1985 |
| Roberto González Nieves | October 3, 1988 |
| John Richard McNamara | May 21, 1992 |
| John Patrick Boles | May 21, 1992 |
| John Brendan McCormack | December 27, 1995 |
| William Francis Murphy | December 27, 1995 |
| Francis Xavier Irwin | September 17, 1996 |
| Emilio Simeon Alluè | September 17, 1996 |
| Richard Joseph Malone | March 1, 2000 |
| Walter James Edyvean | September 14, 2001 |
| Richard Gerard Lennon | September 14, 2001 |
[edit] See also
- Roman Catholic sex abuse cases
- Roman Catholic priests accused of sex offenses
- Crimen sollicitationis
- Pontifical Secret
- Deliver Us from Evil (2006 film)
- Sex Crimes and the Vatican (Panorama Documentary Episode)
- Barbara Blaine founder of SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests)
- Red Hot Catholic Love, South Park television episode
[edit] External links
[edit] References
| Preceded by William Cardinal Baum |
Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau 1973–1984 |
Succeeded by John Joseph Leibrecht |
| Preceded by Humberto Cardinal Medeiros |
Archbishop of Boston 1984–2002 |
Succeeded by Sean O'Malley, OFM Cap |
| Preceded by Carlo Cardinal Furno |
Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore 27 May 2004–Present |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
