MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe
By Kevin Cullen GLOBE STAFF MARCH 20, 2017
The only way you got Breslin out of New York was at gunpoint or with a good story.
Jimmy Breslin, who died Sunday, was the best newspaper columnist in the world and he was the first one to tell you that. But he would also tell you he had good material, and it was almost always in New York. …
Breslin spent some time in Boston researching his 2004 book about the coverup of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, “The Church That Forgot Jesus.”
He wanted to figure out Cardinal Law, why Law would enable so many priests to abuse kids.
“What’s this Law like?” he asked.
I told him that when Law was a young priest in Mississippi, he told others that he was going to be the first American pope.
“That’s not so bad,” Breslin replied.
I told him Law insisted that his staff refer to him as Your Eminence.
“That’s it,” Breslin chirped. “That’s what I needed to know.”
In Breslin’s world, being ambitious was admirable; being pompous was a venal sin.
Breslin zeroed in on one of Law’s assistants, Bishop William Murphy, who had protected abusive priests in Boston. Murphy was rewarded for his loyalty, made bishop of Rockville Centre, on Long Island.
Breslin found out Murphy had kicked some nuns out of their convent so he could turn it into a palace for himself. Breslin nicknamed him Mansion Murphy and made his life miserable, though not as miserable as the lives that Murphy helped ruin by protecting criminals in Roman collars.
Breslin loved good priests and nuns. He just thought there weren’t enough of them, and that it was the big shots running the church who were to blame.
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