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accusers, whose ages at the time they claim they were abused ranged from 6 to 21. A number have become alcoholics, some have developed suicidal tendencies and post-traumatic stress, and one has undergone electroshock treatments … What is truly alarming is how closely their stories resemble one another, according to their ages when they were abused. Shanley allegedly lured the youngest children with games such as strip poker, the younger teens with the pretext of examinations of their penises during puberty, the older youths with an invitation to use his body to get over their fears of homosexuality. He apparently was a master of manipulation and cunning.8

Cardinal Law, Bishop McCormack, and the church bureaucracy concealed Shanley’s sexual career, one cover-up begetting another, until they sent him as a “supply” priest, a part-timer, to San Bernardino. In 1989 Shanley’s friend McCormack flew out to discuss things. No way did they want him back in Boston. “Thank you for your kindness during your brief visit to the wild west,” Shanley said in a letter that nearly grinned. McCormack acceded to his request for a boost to $1,890 a month. The archdiocese eventually put $2,500 down on Shanley’s legal fees before the endgame trial.

In 1990 Father Richard Lennon was advancing up the chain of command as Vicar for Administration when he certified Shanley as a “priest in good standing” for San Bernardino. Cardinal Law placed Lennon and McCormack as facilitators for the in-house response by which administrative clergy, called “delegates,” monitored priests who got in trouble.

MEMORANDUM

TO: Father Lennon

FROM: Father McCormack

DATE: February 14, 1994

RE: Reverend Paul Shanley

Recently, Paul Shanley changed his address from San Diego to Palm Springs. Would you please inform the appropriate offices of this change of address:

Reverend Paul Shanley

970 Parocela Place

Palm Springs, California 92264

The knowledge of this address is for internal use only. It is not to be made public.9

The thousands of pages from Boston church files that became available through the grind of legal discovery were scanned and organized for ready retrieval on the Internet by Anne Barrett Doyle and Terence McKiernan as they gathered documents from many dioceses at BishopAccountability.org in the town of Waltham. Barrett Doyle and McKiernan were stocking the raw materials for journalists, historians, and anyone else on the inner workings of the hierarchy. When Lennon began as Apostolic Administrator, the acting bishop of Boston after Law, he told reporters in a press conference the week before Christmas 2002 that he had “no involvement” in the case of a recently accused priest, although, as the Boston Herald soon reported, he had attended a long meeting about the cleric.10 The Globe unearthed Lennon’s role in handling a pathological priest named John Picardi, in which he showed exquisite concern for ecclesiastical life as a law unto itself:

[Father John] McCormack recommended that Picardi be allowed to serve temporarily in the Paterson, N.J. diocese after treatment at a counseling center. McCormack told the Paterson diocese only that Picardi “admits to a sexual incident with an adult male in Florida.”

In New Jersey, Picardi faced another accusation in 1995, in which he was alleged to have inappropriately touched a fifth-grade girl. It was then Lennon became involved, urging that Boston, and not Paterson, take up the charge against him.

In the September 1995 memo, Lennon appeared to express concern that allowing the Paterson diocese to investigate might cause a scandal. “Opening such an investigation runs the real risk of negative fall-out both for Father Picardi and for the Church,” Lennon wrote.

On October 6, 1995, Law received a memo from another aide, the Rev. Brian Flatley, noting that Picardi had admitted to the 1992 rape. “However, we allowed him to return to ministry in Paterson after that incident … Because of this, according to Father Lennon, canon law does not allow us to use this incident