Boston’s Cardinal Law determined to carry on in spite of archdiocese hiding Fr Paul Shanley's abuses since 1967 and Fr John Geoghan's scores of victims

  BOSTON (CNS) -- Cardinal Bernard Law said this week that he does not intend to resign as archbishop of Boston despite calls from many quarters for him to step down.
  In a two-page letter to his priests he said, "I know there are many who believe my resignation is part of the solution" to the archdiocese's scandal over priests who have sexually abused minors.
  "It distresses me greatly to have become a lightning rod of division when mine should be ministry of unity," he continued.
  "My desire is to serve this archdiocese and the whole Church with every fibre of my being. This I will continue to do as long as God gives me the opportunity."
  Releasing the letter to reporters at an afternoon press conference, archdiocesan spokeswoman Donna M. Morrissey said the cardinal "is clear that he at this time will continue to serve" as archbishop of Boston. The letter "speaks for itself," she said.
  Three days earlier a new uproar arose over the handling of clergy sex offenders by Boston archdiocesan authorities when lawyers for an alleged abuse victim released hundreds of pages of archdiocesan documents concerning Father Paul Shanley.

 
  Father Shanley remained an active priest in good standing into the 1990s despite a series of abuse allegations against him that went back as far as 1967 and complaints that he spoke in favour of sexual relations between men and boys.
  Following the Shanley revelations, The Boston Globe and The Union Leader of Manchester, NH, called editorially for Cardinal Law to resign.
  The Boston Herald had called for his resignation a month earlier.
  Most of Cardinal Law's letter focussed on past inadequacies in archdiocesan handling of sexual abuse allegations against priests and on the gradual evolution in the Church to a better understanding of such abuse and how it must be handled.
  Scandals over past practices have rocked the archdiocese since January, when the Globe ran a series of investigative reports on the issue and John Geoghan, a defrocked paedophile priest with scores of victims was tried, convicted and imprisoned for fondling a child.
  The secrecy with which the Church used to treat such cases "was inspired by a desire to protect the privacy of the victim, to avoid scandal to the faithful and the preserve the reputation of the priest," Cardinal Law wrote.