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	Attorney for Clergy Abuse Victims Welcomes Law's Departure By Martin Finucane Boston Globe November 21, 2011 http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/11/21/attorney-for-clergy-abuse-victims-welcomes-law-departure-from-vatican-post/uYjQkVtCU7uWrOf4xZFvRL/story.html News that Cardinal Bernard Law is leaving his job as head of a major Roman basilica was welcomed today by attorneys and advocates for clergy sex abuse victims. "With all due respect, society has not lost a great protector of children. Bernard Cardinal Law should return to Boston and address the clergy sex abuse victims who he let be sexually molested while he was cardinal," said attorney Mitchell Garabedian. "Bernard Cardinal Law turned his back on innocent children, acted immorally, and should be held accountable," Garabedian said. Terry Donilon, a spokesman for the Boston archdiocese, referred all questions to the Vatican. A man who answered the phone at the Vatican press office declined to comment, suggesting a reporter call back on Tuesday. Terry McKiernan, founder of bishopaccountability.org, a library and Internet archive of the clergy sex abuse crisis, also welcomed the news. "It's a long time coming, but we are certainly glad his influence is finally, for all intents and purposes, over in Rome," he said. McKiernan said Law, because he had hit the age of 80, would no longer be able to vote, as part of the College of Cardinals, for a new pope. He also said Law had also passed the maximum age for membership in a group of top Vatican officials who recommended the appointment of new bishops, where he had a "long history of rewarding managers who worked for him on sex abuse cases." He said Law would no longer be part of that "congregation" of officials and "perhaps we've seen the last persons being rewarded with a bishop's position as part of cronyism on the part of Cardinal Law." With his departure from the basilica post, McKiernan said, "even his informal power in the Vatican is truly on the wane." Law resigned in disgrace as Boston's archbishop in 2002 after the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted. The Vatican said Monday that Pope Benedict XVI had accepted the 80-year-old Law's resignation as archpriest of St. Mary Major basilica and had named as Law's replacement Spanish Monsignor Santos Abril y Castello. Law's 2004 appointment as the archpriest of one of Rome's most important basilicas had been harshly criticized by advocates for clerical sex abuse victims, who say bishops who covered up for pedophile priests should be punished, not rewarded. Law turned 80 earlier this month. While the pope could have kept him on longer -- the dean of the College of Cardinals, for example, turns 84 this week -- Benedict decided to replace him. The Vatican announcement made no mention of Law's resignation, though, merely noting in a perfunctory, two-line statement that Benedict had named a new archpriest for the basilica. Law became the first -- and so far only -- U.S. bishop to resign for mishandling cases of priests who sexually abused priests.
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