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	Cardinals Heading to Rome Known for Their Allegiance to the Pope New York Times April 20, 2002 http://www2.jsonline.com:80/news/intl/apr02/36941.asp The American Roman Catholic cardinals who have been summoned to the Vatican this week for an extraordinary closed-door meeting on the sexual abuse crisis are men who have risen to the top not as innovators or entrepreneurs, but as loyalists, steadfast in devotion to their church and their pope, John Paul II. All were appointed cardinals by him, and most are in their 70s or 80s. Like the pope, they were trained in an era when priests' sexual misbehavior with minors was settled in the secrecy of the confessional, not the glare of the courtroom. Now they are traveling to Rome to repair the damage that critics say resulted when they and other bishops went too far in protecting the church's clerics and financial assets from the former altar boys and girls, parochial school students, seminarians and others who say they were sexually abused by priests. The cardinals have made it clear they are on a mission to restore their credibility, signaling in interviews in recent days that their Vatican meetings are likely to produce not just compassionate words for the victims of priests, but also concrete steps to help renew confidence in the moral authority of the church. But little in their careers has prepared these leaders to handle the upheaval that has engulfed the church. Four are canon lawyers, schooled in seeing justice through the lens of the church's internal legal code. Another, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, is a diplomat, trusted with representing the church in sensitive missions to places such as the Middle East and Vietnam. Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit raised $60 million to build the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington. These are the leaders who have been asked to put out a blaze that started in the chancery offices of their most eminent member, Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston, and has since spread to singe them all. The eight American cardinals who lead archdioceses are now all under scrutiny for their handling of sexual abuse accusations against priests. Two of them, Cardinals Edward M. Egan of New York and Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, have come under harsher scrutiny than others. The only American cardinal traveling to the meeting at the Vatican who has not been directly touched by the scandal is Cardinal Avery Dulles, a theologian at Fordham University in New York, who does not control an archdiocese. The other cardinal archbishops attending are Anthony J. Bevilacqua of Philadelphia and Francis E. George of Chicago. Both Dulles and Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore, who is best known for the delicate work of building bridges between Jews and Catholics, suggested in interviews last week that the sexual abuse scandal was a creation of a news media feeding frenzy. They are not alone in that view. In between expressions of contrition, church officials mentioned in interviews that they feel they are being unfairly criticized for cases that go back 20 years or more. How to respond The cardinals acknowledged last week that they now bear the burden of proving they understand the depth of anger and betrayal expressed by many Catholics. As if in an orchestrated media campaign, five of the eight cardinal archbishops gave interviews last week saying that they now favored adopting a national policy that would require American bishops to notify civil authorities of all credible allegations of abuse. Several cardinals added that they might ask the Vatican to make it easier for them to laicize, or defrock, a priest. Even a few fellow bishops, who refused to be quoted, said in interviews that they had been stunned by the revelations that Law protected and reassigned two particularly unrepentant priests that he was told were serial child abusers, John Geoghan and the Rev. Paul Shanley. After proclaiming that there were no more accused priests in his archdiocese, Law combed his personnel files and provided the authorities with 80 more names. Law was a favored papal adviser who donned the red cardinal's hat in 1985 and is therefore the most senior prelate in the American church. "The buzz around him whenever he traveled in ecclesiastical circles was, this is the most powerful man in the wealthiest and most powerful branch of the church in the world," said John L. Allen Jr., the Vatican correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly. Law now heads to Rome stooped in stature, resisting widespread calls for his resignation.
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