Bernard Francis Law

Law was born in Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico, on November 4, 1931, and Helen A. Law (née Stubblefield). His father was a United States Air Force colonel and a veteran pilot of World War I. He graduated from Harvard College with a major in medieval history before studying philosophy at Saint Joseph Seminary College in St. Benedict, Louisiana, from 1953 to 1955, and theology at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Worthington, Ohio, from 1955 to 1961. ==Priestly ministry in the civil rights era==

On May 21, 1961, Law was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson in Mississippi. He was a member of the Mississippi Leadership Conference and the Mississippi Human Relations Council. Law's civil rights activity led him to develop ties with Protestant church leaders and he received national attention for his work for ecumenism, and in 1968 he was tapped for his first national post, as executive director of the US Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. ==Bishop of Springfield–Cape Girardeau==

Pope Paul VI named Law bishop of the Springfield–Cape Girardeau in Missouri on October 22, 1973, and he was consecrated on December 5 of that year. He was made a member of the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and served from 1976 to 1981 as a consultor to its Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. In the program's first year, sixty-four Episcopal priests applied for acceptance. This brought married priests with their families into U.S. Catholic dioceses for the first time. ==Archbishop of Boston==

On January 11, 1984, Law was appointed Archbishop of Boston by Pope John Paul II and was installed on March 23, 1984. That same year, Law reassigned a local priest, Fr John Geoghan, to St. Julia's in Weston, on the recommendation of medical professionals. Geoghan had previously been known to abuse children, and at least one auxiliary bishop in Boston warned Law that the priest was unfit to return to parish ministry. In 1985, delivering one of the few speeches in Latin at the Synod of Bishops, he called for the creation of a "universal catechism" to guard against dissent, especially by theologians. He was the second prelate to call for such a document, which became the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992). Law oversaw the first draft of its English translation. In the mid-1980s, Law chaired the bishops' Committee on Pastoral Research and Practices at the time it distributed a report on Freemasonry. Reporter Kristen Lombardi, who was assigned to investigate by Susan Ryan-Vollmar, the editor of the Boston Phoenix weekly, wrote "Cardinal sin", an article about the cases. Resignation In April 2002, following the Boston Globes public exposure of the cover-up by Cardinal Law (and his predecessor Cardinal Humberto Medeiros) of offending priests in the Boston Archdiocese, Law consulted with Pope John Paul II and other Vatican officials and said he was committed to staying on as archbishop and addressing the scandal: "It is my intent to address at length the record of the Archdiocese's handling of these cases by reviewing the past in as systematic and comprehensive way as possible, so that legitimate questions which have been raised might be answered." Even so, Law submitted his resignation as Archbishop of Boston to the Vatican, which Pope John Paul II accepted on December 13, 2002. and moved to Rome. In July 2003, Seán O'Malley, OFMCap was named the new Archbishop of Boston. The Boston Globe said in an editorial the day after Law's resignation was accepted that "Law had become the central figure in a scandal of criminal abuse, denial, payoff, and coverup that resonates around the world". The Globes exposé of the scandal was the subject of an Oscar-winning film, Spotlight released in the United States in November 2015, in which Law was portrayed by Len Cariou. While no longer Archbishop of Boston, Law remained a bishop and cardinal of the Catholic Church in good standing; as a cardinal, he participated in the 2005 papal conclave. By the time of the 2013 papal conclave, he had become ineligible to vote as he was over the age of 80. ==Roman Appointment==

Within weeks of his resignation, Law moved from Boston to Rome. Law 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, Bishops as well as the Pontifical Council for the Family. He became even more influential in those Vatican congregations and, being based in Rome, he could attend all their meetings, unlike cardinals based in other countries. In May 2004, Pope John Paul II appointed Law to a post in Rome, as Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, a largely ceremonial role. Some saw this an attempt to shield Law from potential criminal prosecution as his new position conveyed citizenship in Vatican City. Law reached 80 on November 4, 2011, and lost the right to participate in a papal conclave as well as his memberships in offices of the Roman Curia. He remained as archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore until November 21, 2011, when Archbishop Santos Abril y Castelló was appointed as the new archpriest. In Rome, Law was considered an active and important conservative voice within many of the Vatican offices in which he served. Robert Mickens, a longtime Vatican journalist, reported that Law believed he had been "badly done by", and that other cardinals saw him as a victim rather than a guilty party. Until his retirement, Mickens said, "He did not lose his influence. He was a member of more congregations than any other bishop ... Cardinals that are members of these offices can't always go to the meetings — they don't live in Rome — but Bernie Law did and he goes everywhere and he keeps his head held high." ==Retirement and death==

It was "commonly believed that [Law would] live out his retirement in Rome" (when he reached 80 years of age). After his retirement in 2011, Law continued to live in Vatican City, and regularly attended the annual July 4 Independence Day parties held by the United States Embassy to the Holy See. , he was living in the Palazzo della Cancelleria. In May 2012, the National Catholic Reporter and The Tablet, a British Catholic weekly, reported that Law was "the person in Rome most forcefully supporting" Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori's petition to investigate and discipline the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a large group of American nuns. After a long illness, Law died in Rome on December 20, 2017, at the age of 86. He is buried in a chapel at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Vatican TV did not livestream the Mass as it normally does. Upon his death, his successor as Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Seán O'Malley, OFMCap, said it was "unfortunate" that Law "had such a high-profile place in the life of the Church". He speculated that today Law would not receive the sort of Vatican appointments he enjoyed after leaving Boston "but unfortunately we're living with the consequences of that". The Guardian noted at the time that Law had become "a symbol of the Roman Catholic Church's systematic protection of paedophile priests" because of his refusal to stop sexual abuse in Boston. ==In popular culture==

Law is portrayed by Len Cariou in the 2015 biographical drama Spotlight. ==See also==