Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [43]
A survivor named Arthur Austin planted himself in front of the cathedral, day after day, like a Jew at the Wailing Wall, a media sensation as the Boston story sparked questions in other newsrooms about bishops hiding other priests. Law made the Newsweek cover on March 4 with the subtitle “80 Priests Accused of Child Abuse in Boston—and New Soul-Searching Across America.” On those frigid days outside Holy Cross Cathedral downtown, Art Austin confided, “I felt like Sisyphus—being punished not for being bad but telling the truth.”8
A sense of agony seeped into the marrow of Catholic Boston. At Mass, Bowers saw the anguish in people’s body language, the strained faces telegraphing betrayal. He began his sermon one Sunday by stating that he needed to hear from them. Words gushed out of people who were livid at the cardinal and bishops for sending predators to new places, fresh victims. “That bastard, Bernard Law!” thundered one man. People said Shush! Bowers let him vent.
A clamor rose in the media for Law’s resignation; he lumbered on.
In late April, Law flew to Rome to meet with Pope John Paul and seven other U.S. cardinals as the crisis made international headlines. Scores of reporters converged on Vatican City. Bowers followed the Globe and TV news.
John Paul was enfeebled by Parkinson’s. His face swollen, body bent, and voice slurred, the pope once so hale and charismatic now sadly seemed to personify a power structure weak and out of touch. In a shaky voice he read a paper calling the abuse “an appalling sin in the eyes of God.” But a few lines later he washed the hands of guilty bishops in saying that “a generalized lack of knowledge, and also at times the advice of the clinical experts led bishops to make [the wrong] decisions”—blame the therapists. As the church worked to “establish more reliable criteria,” he continued, they should not forget “the power of Christian conversion … that radical decision to turn away from sin and back to God”—implying redemption of some kind for sex offender clerics.
The pope doesn’t get it, thought Peter Borré, riveted to his TV set.
He wondered if anyone had a plan.
“People need to know that there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young,” declared John Paul.
But how did that square with “the power of Christian conversion”?9 Would the pederasts be defrocked? How did Vatican courts enforce justice?
CARDINALS IN CRISIS
A world away from the daily lives of Bowers and countless priests, the cardinals and Curial members close to the pope retreated to a private caucus. Law disappeared from the coverage. Borré shook his head. If Law can’t make his stand at the Vatican, he’s finished. The whole mess reminded him of Watergate.
The afternoon of April 23, 2002, at the closed meeting in the Apostolic Palace, beneath the ornate frescoes of Sala Bologna, Law apologized to the pope’s inner circle and his brother cardinals. Prior to that, the Los Angeles Times had quoted an unnamed cardinal saying Law should resign. Reporter Larry Stammer’s access to Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles fed speculation that the tall, lanky cardinal, who had said Frank Sinatra’s funeral Mass after persuading him to make confession, viewed Law as a liability for Princes of the Church.10
Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos had his own view. A native of Colombia, Castrillón was a remarkable linguist whose persona radiated confidence; he slept in the bed of Pope Pius XII.11 Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, he had a classic Latin strain of the authoritarian, a religious version of the caudillo, or dictator. He bristled at the media’s anti-Catholic bias. In a press conference several weeks prior to the cardinals’ visit, Castrillón amazed reporters by calling the crisis a problem rooted in American society’s “pan-sexuality and sexual licentiousness.”12 Besides monitoring the disposition of church property, Clergy oversaw the rights of priests, and in that sphere Castrillón had experience.
In 1992 Father Robert Trupia