A fall from grace
A cardinal resigns, but the church crisis shows no sign of abating
Evidence. For Cardinal Law, the legal situation deteriorated significantly during the past two weeks. As plaintiffs' lawyers began to release some 12,000 documents on 65 priests, it quickly became evident that Law had kept priests accused of abuse on the payroll, transferring some to other parishes instead of suspending them and keeping them away from children. In one horrifying case, James D. Foley, a priest, had affairs in the 1960s with three women and fathered at least two children. Foley left one mistress as she began to faint from an apparent drug overdose. He returned to call 911, but she died. Despite expressing concerns in 1993 about Foley's conduct, Law kept Foley active in the ministry. The files also indicate that Law was aware of other priests who allegedly fondled children, ripped the hair out of a 58-year-old housekeeper's scalp, and traded cocaine for sex.
In many cases, it turns out, Law embraced the accused and the fallen. He wrote to priest Peter Frost, an admitted sexual abuser, in 1999: "It is my hope that some day in the future you will return to an appropriate ministry." The disclosures are likely to continue. Plaintiffs' lawyer Roderick MacLeish Jr. says his team inadvertently discovered a document discussing "26 priests we had never heard of" who went before a review board for misconduct in the 1990s. The archdiocese told them they would turn over those documents as well. "The iceberg," MacLeish told U.S.News, "is starting to melt."
The heat on Law only intensified when Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly, shocked by the revelations contained in the documents and emboldened by growing public outrage, sent Law a grand jury subpoena. "There was a coverup," Reilly said last week, "an elaborate scheme to keep it away from law enforcement, to keep it quiet." The intensification of a criminal case against the Boston archdiocese was a devastating blow to Law and the American Catholic Church. "The subpoena changes the kind of exposure the church faces in terms of the perjury potential for the cardinal and the potential corporate criminal problems for the Boston archdiocese," says Wendy Murphy, a Harvard law scholar, former prosecutor, and victims' advocate. "Suddenly there's a potential crime there."
With Jeff Glasser
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