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Death Comes for Cardinal Law
The face of Catholicism’s clergy sexual-abuse scandal is laid to rest in Rome—but his legacy still haunts the American church.
VATICAN CITY—Cardinal Bernard Law was laid to rest on Thursday far from Boston, the city of his highest ascent and most devastating failure. The American priest resigned his leadership of the archdiocese in 2002 when The Boston Globe revealed that he had covered up rampant clergy sex abuse of children. Just two years later, he was whisked to Rome, where Pope John Paul II made him the ceremonial head of one of the city’s four major basilicas: Santa Maria Maggiore, or St. Mary Major in English.
It was a prestigious landing for the prelate who had come to symbolize the Catholic Church’s worst scandal in at least a generation.
