The recent box office hit Spotlight, based on the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal article published by the Spotlight Team of the Boston Globe in 2002, has brought back into all of our minds the horrific, pedophilic acts by leaders of the Catholic Church and the people who let it happen.

John Geoghan, who molested over 130 children including a four-year-old boy, according to the Boston Globe, was not immediately defrocked of his priesthood, but rather moved around from parish to parish even though the Catholic Church knew of his and other priests’ sexual abuse of kids. Geoghan usually went after young, poor boys whose mothers were struggling to raise a big family. Geoghan would earn the mother’s trust by befriending her and then offering to pray with one of their boys or take them out.

When Patrick McSorley was 12, Geoghan took him out to get ice cream. On the way home, McSorley said, “…he put his hand on my genitals and started masturbating me. I was petrified.” Then McSorley claimed that Geoghan started masturbating in the car they were in. When they got home, McSorley said that Geoghan told him to keep it secret and said, “We’re very good at keeping secrets.’’ Like many of the hundreds of victims of priest abuse, McSorley suffered from substance abuse issues and depression. McSorley died of a drug overdose in 2004.

But this is not even the most upsetting part of the story: Cardinal Bernard Law, Geoghan’s direct superior, knew of his abuse and kept shuffling Geoghan around from parish to parish after complaints of molestation, which is completely contradictory to the Catholic values of “protecting the young and fostering celibacy” according to former priest A.W. Sipe. Often the Catholic Church would settle legal claims by saying that the priest has been “cured” and then reassigning them to new parishes.

Since 1997, the Church spent over 10 million dollars settling 50 cases alone against Geoghan and made all the documents confidential. Geoghan was not the only priest in Boston who molested young boys, was shuffled around from parish to parish, and whose legal cases were made confidential — at least 70 priests in Boston molested children between 1984-2002 and had similar consequences to Geoghan according to the Boston Globe. The man behind all of this was Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston from 1984-2002. Law, born in 1931 in Mexico, was a Harvard-educated man, a civil rights activist, and on January 11, 1984 was appointed the Archbishop of Boston by Pope John Paul II. Even in 1984, he was aware of the molestation scandals and started moving priests around and even signing papers saying they weren’t dangerous. Law even went as far to say, “There is no priest in an assignment in this archdiocese whom we know to have been guilty of child abuse.”  

On January 6, 2002 the Globe’s story broke and the world was forced to recognize the hypocrisy and corruption of the Catholic Church — a church that protected pedophiles. The Boston case was only the tip of the iceberg of sexual abuse cases involving the church that would break worldwide. What followed for Law was a “Nixonian” scandal. He stood firm in his decision to not go, but was eventually pressured by his peers to leave. “He was seen as the most powerful cardinal of the most powerful Catholic Church in the world, meaning the United States, and to fall from that to where he ended up is the most dramatic fall from grace I’ve ever personally witnessed,” Vatican expert John Allen told WBUR last month.

But his fall from grace was not permanent. He moved to the Vatican City in the December of 2002 after his resignation, in 2004 he was made archpriest of Basilica de Santa Maria Maggiore, and in 2005 he voted in the papal conclave and was a member of the Congregations for the Oriental Churches, the Clergy, Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Evangelisation of Peoples, Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Catholic Education, and the Pontifical Council for the Family. The Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore is the largest church in Rome dedicated to the Virgin Mary and is considered one of the greatest basilicas in the world. John Allen said, “Cardinal Law was the last of an old regime, which said even when Cardinals have engaged in spectacular failures somehow their dignity and status has to be protected.”

The hypocrisy and truth of this statement infuriated many. How could the church, who claims its mission is to protect the people and spread the word of God, let this happen? Why is Cardinal Law being rewarded for his actions of protecting the name of the church and not young children? Jessica Jordan of Boston, MA said, “As far as I’m concerned Cardinal Law is every bit as complicit as the priests who carried out the abuse. This scandal and the manner in which the church handled it is a large part of why I no longer consider myself a Catholic. By protecting Cardinal Law the Vatican has condoned his actions. It would appear that Law’s willingness to cover for the church is more important to them than protecting children from sexual predators. This is unacceptable. The man belongs in jail, not in Rome.” Unfortunately, Cardinal Law could never be put in jail because at the time there was no law in Massachusetts to report child abuse.

Although Cardinal Law has since retired from his position as archpriest when he was 80 in 2011, he now lives a very comfortable life in the Renaissance Palace of the Papal Chancellery. Ellie Pike ‘18 said, “The Catholic Church has a long tradition of being politically poisoned….it does not surprise me that they made this decision (to protect Law).” Thousands of people want Law to be put in jail or at least have some kind of punishment for the harm that he caused, but there is nothing that he can be legally prosecuted for. Denis Kohlmuller says, “Law and justice must be applied to everyone regardless of their status,” but it is thought that church will protect him until dies, refusing to ever truly acknowledge the harm that he caused and the sins he committed.