BishopAccountability.org
	Law's Rome Secretary on Archdiocese Payroll By Marie Szaniszlo August 31, 2005 The Boston Archdiocese is still paying one of Cardinal Bernard Law's closest friends to study church law and serve as Law's secretary in Rome. Boston Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, who took over Law's post after he resigned in 2002 at the height of the clergy sexual abuse scandal, mentioned Monsignor Paul B. McInerny's appointment in the April 1 edition of The Pilot, the archdiocese's weekly newspaper – but not that McInerny would remain on the payroll. Asked why the archdiocese is paying one of its priests to be secretary to the disgraced ex-archbishop, archdiocese spokesman Terrence C. Donilon said, "I would only deduce nothing more than monsignor's desire to resume his studies in Rome and the fact he has worked with the cardinal previously." O'Malley is closing roughly one-quarter of the archdiocese's parishes because of a shortage of priests and a financial crisis caused by plummeting donations in the scandal's wake. "Why, when we have a shortage of priests, are we exporting a monsignor to serve a man who resigned from this archdiocese in disgrace, and doing it at our own expense?" said Peter Borre, a member of the Council of Parishes, a group opposed to local church closings. "Boston Catholics have met all of their obligations to Bernard Law, and owe him nothing." McInerny – the cardinal's secretary from 1991 until 2001, when Law appointed him director of Boston Catholic Television – is now a member of the cardinal's staff at St. Mary Major. Law was promoted to the basilica after his resignation in the wake of revelations he had shuffled priests who were known child molesters from parish to parish. "Cardinal Law is the best thing that's ever happened to the church in Boston in terms of leadership," McInerny told one reporter in the heat of the scandal in 2002. Yesterday, Donilon said the archdiocese does not disclose confidential personnel information such as how much local Catholics are paying for McInerny to work and study in Rome. In the past, officials have said archdiocese priests make about $1,400 a month. The number of priests on sabbatical "is typically a small number, often in the single digits," Donilon said.
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