Cardinal Bernard Francis Law

BA, Harvard University

If you’ve seen the movie Spotlight, winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Picture, you know the story of the vast child-molestation scandal that was covered up for years by the Catholic archdiocese of Boston. And you know that the former archbishop of Boston, Bernard Francis Law (played by Len Cariou), was actively involved in concealing the sexual predations of dozens if not hundreds of priests.

Law was an air force brat, which meant an itinerant childhood: born in Mexico, he attended schools in various US states and Colombia before graduating from high school in the Virgin Islands. He did well enough to get into Harvard, where he majored in medieval history. After graduating in 1953, he segued to the medieval setting of the Catholic Church, doing graduate work at a seminary in Louisiana and another in Ohio. He was ordained in 1961.

His first priestly gig was in Mississippi. Given the way this story ends, it may surprise you to learn that, in the Deep South in the 1960s, Father Law blossomed into an outspoken civil rights advocate. As in, riling up the racists so badly that he received death threats. As in, being publicly praised by Charles Evers, brother of the slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

Law’s civil rights work turned him into a star. He ascended to bishop in the early 1970s and was tapped by the Vatican to work on various nontraditional issues, such as forging a better relationship with the Jews and figuring out how to import Episcopalian priests (even married ones) into the Roman Catholic hierarchy. In 1984 he hit the big time: archbishop of Boston and then, the following year, cardinal!

As we all now know, one problem with being a capo in the Catholic Church is that you’ve got so damned many depraved child molesters working for you. And, at least if you’re Cardinal Law, and your interests have evolved from defending the downtrodden to protecting the Church, you can’t just fire them and report them to the civil authorities. No, what you do, if you’re Cardinal Law, is when you learn that a priest has done unthinkable things to a child, you quietly move that priest to another diocese. This provides some relief for your parishioners, an out-of-sight, out-of-mind relief to you, and—although you pretend you don’t know this—fresh meat for the pervy priest.

One example. Father John Geoghan was accused of imposing himself on more than 130 children. Law knew all about it but did not call the police. Instead, the cardinal moved him to a new parish each time a parental outcry threatened to blast through the Church’s wall of omertà. Eventually even Law couldn’t contain the news of Geoghan’s rampant pederasty, and in 2002 the priest was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to prison.*

Multiply Geoghan by more than 200 rogue priests, with more than 500 known victims, and you’ll begin to understand the breadth of the problem. And the egregiousness of Law’s cover-up. And the importance of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight reporting. And the consequent ruin the Church brought down upon itself, both to its global brand and its financial stability.*

Bernard Law resigned as archbishop of Boston in late 2002, but he remained Cardinal Law and, for some reason, was not subject to prosecution. Soon he’d procured a big-time sinecure at the Vatican itself, no doubt as a token of gratitude for his loyalty and as an indication of the opinion of many other cardinals that Law was the victim of a witch-hunt rather than an enabler of criminal behavior and destroyer of children.

In his final years on earth, we imagine that Bernard Law has plenty of time to reflect upon his life. And we’d like to think that, with his Harvard-honed knowledge of medieval history, he carries within him a vivid, haunting, and relentless vision of what awaits him in the eternal damnation of the Roman Catholic hell.