Boston Cardinal Bernard Law said last night he met with Pope John Paul II during an unannounced trip to the Vatican to discuss the child sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the US Roman Catholic Church, and addressed the growing calls for Law's resignation.
Cardinal Law, the senior Roman Catholic prelate in the US, issued a statement saying he met with the pope and Vatican officials over the past few days and discussed the impact that cases involving priests sexually abusing children were having on public opinion and the Boston Archdiocese.
"As a result of my stay in Rome, I return home encouraged in my efforts to provide the strongest possible leadership in ensuring, as far as humanly possible, that no child is ever abused again by a priest of this archdiocese," Cardinal Law said in his statement.
Cardinal Law (70) has faced enormous pressure to resign in Boston, the fourth-largest diocese in the US with 2 million Catholics. The pressure has increased amid revelations that he knew of sexual misconduct allegations against priests in the archdiocese, but failed to keep the priests away from children.
Cardinal Law said last week that he did not intend to resign, and gave no indication yesterday that he had changed his mind after meeting with the pope.
"The fact that my resignation has been proposed as necessary was part of my presentation," Cardinal Law said in the statement. "The pope and those others with whom I met are very conscious of the gravity of the situation. It is clear to me that the primary emphasis of the Holy See, like that of the church in the archdiocese, is upon the protection of the children."
Cardinal Law's meeting with the pope came as US cardinals prepared to gather in Rome next week to discuss the crisis in which sexual-abuse allegations against priests in Boston triggered revelations about numerous other cases involving priests in other parts of the US.