THE US: Following the release of a huge volume of documentation on the Catholic Church's protection and regular reassignment of a self-confessed paedophile priest, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston has again apologised for his role in the affair but refused to resign.
"My resignation is not part of the solution as I see it," he told a group of about 520 priests from the Boston area on Thursday. "I want the archdiocese to become a model for how this issue should be handled."
"I wish it were possible to go back in time and undo some of the decisions that I made," he said. But the cardinal has instructed the clergy of the diocese to comply with a new law requiring them to report incidents and accusations of abuse, past and present, or known paedophiles to the police.
The church had fought in the courts to prevent the publication by the Boston Globe of the documents, mostly affidavits and discovery from pending civil actions. The papers reflect a similar preoccupation over the years with preventing scandal rather than halting the abuse or bringing the known abuser to the attention of the authorities.
More than 130 people have alleged that Father John Geoghan, defrocked in 1998, molested them during a career as a priest of the diocese from 1962 to 1995. The church has settled 50 lawsuits so far for a total of $10 million; 84 more are pending. Geoghan was convicted last week of one case of molesting a boy and faces two further criminal trials on similar charges.
"What is striking about the documents that became public this week," the Globe reports, "is the indifference of the church to the extent of Geoghan's abuse. With just one exception, the Geoghan records and the transcripts of depositions of church officials contain no hint that anyone around the cardinal urged him to remove children from Geoghan's reach until 1993."
The papers reveal repeated attempts to silence parents at the same time as repeated sympathetic acceptance over the years of assurances from Geoghan, an admitted abuser, that he was successfully confronting his problems.
In succession, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros and Cardinal Law from 1984 offered him their prayers, but never condemnation. Even as the prosecutors closed in, Cardinal Law wrote to Geoghan in 1996: "Yours has been an effective life of ministry, sadly impaired by illness . . . God bless you, Jack."
In 1989 before moving him to another parish, following new allegations and another session of "treatment", Cardinal Law would write: "It's most heartening to know that things have gone well for you and that you are ready to resume your efforts with renewed zeal."
Bishop Thomas Daily, once deputy to both cardinals and now Bishop of Brooklyn, acknowledges in an affidavit that he had tried to persuade parents of abused children not to go public to avoid causing scandal.
One of those relatives wrote to Cardinal Medeiros after that 1982 meeting, complaining that Dr Daily had suggested "that we keep silent to protect the boys - that is absurd since minors are protected under law, and I do not wish to hear that remark again, since it is insulting to our intelligence." The cardinal responded calling the incidents "a very delicate situation and one that has caused great scandal."
Another relation of several abused children, Ms Margaret Gallant, wrote to his successor in 1984, to report that Geoghan had recently been seen with many young boys and to urge action.
Despite the absence of records of abuse during his first 18 years as a priest, from 1962 to 1980, interviews with some of Geoghan's victims and depositions of church officials show the archdiocese was aware of his abuse of children during those years. But Church officials never referred any allegations of sexual abuse about Geoghan to the authorities. Instead, they sought to rehabilitate him by placing him on sick leave, or sending him to local doctors before moving him to another parish.
