Source: The Guardian

When Cardinal Bernard Law was forced under public pressure to resign as archbishop of Boston in 2002, he was considered a pariah within the ranks of the American Catholic church.

In an editorial at the time, the Boston Globe – which had helped bring him down by exposing how the archdiocese had covered up years of sexual abuse by paedophile priests – said that Law had become the “central figure in a scandal of criminal abuse, denial, payoff and coverup that resonates around the world”.

The story behind the Globe’s exposé is the subject of a new film called Spotlight, which stars Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo and is being released in the US on Friday. (It will reach British cinemas on 29 January.)

The movie is likely to revive questions about the church’s handling of sex abuse – both then and now – and revive memories of a painful period for abuse victims and millions of American Catholics.

But Law is likely to be insulated from any controversy: in the 13 years since his resignation, he has found a haven far from Boston, behind the walls of theVatican.

At the time of his resignation, the cardinal was being pilloried publicly for having turned a blind eye to sex abuse, and embodying a culture that “reflexively placed the reputation of the church above the pain of victims”.

But for years, he served in an honorific role as the archpriest of the Basilica of the Santa Maria Maggiore until his retirement, at the age of 80, in 2011.

Today, Law enjoys the quiet life that any senior and retired cardinal living in Vatican City would: he is a fixture of the annual 4 July Independence Day party held by the US embassy to the Holy See, and was until recently considered an active and important conservative voice within many of the Vatican offices where he served.

“He is living out his elderly age just like many elderly cardinals who are in Rome or elsewhere do, and the way we probably will too if we make it over 80 years old,” said Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.

Robert Mickens, a longtime Vatican journalist and editor of Global Pulsemagazine said Law was “everywhere” during his active years in Rome and apparently believed he had been “badly done by”. Law could not be reached by the Guardian and is known to avoid interviews.

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