BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | April 9, 2006
Call it the (Saint) Peter Principle. With the appointment of Bishop Richard Lennon as head of the Cleveland Diocese, is there a top aide to Cardinal Bernard Law left who has not been rewarded with a promotion?
Lennon, of course, was interim head of the Boston Archdiocese after Law's forced resignation in December 2002 in the midst of the sexual abuse scandal. He was the compassionate shepherd who subpoenaed records of victims' therapists in an attempt to undermine their credibility. He was the man of God who hired legal specialists to argue that civil authorities had no right to interfere in a church's supervision of its priests. He was the man of the people who shut the doors of parochial schools and neighborhood parishes without so much as a conversation with the people in the pews.
Why wouldn't the Vatican choose him to lead a diocese of 800,000 Roman Catholics? It awarded Law a comfortable posting to Rome, after all.
Lennon follows a long line of similarly rewarded subordinates who did the boss's bidding despite the damage inflicted on victims of the predatory priests the Boston hierarchy was so determined to protect.