BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald
December 21, 2017
By Chris Cassidy, Marie Szanislo, Matt Stout
Pope to preside over final prayers for Law
Cardinal Bernard Law’s funeral today inside St. Peter’s Basilica — one of the holiest shrines in Catholicism — where Pope Francis will attend has enraged survivors of clergy sex abuse who say the disgraced cleric doesn’t deserve the high honor.
“One of the big things that bothers me is he’s going to have this huge funeral in the Vatican at St. Peter’s Basilica with all the pomp and circumstance. He doesn’t deserve it,” said Ann Hagan Webb, a priest abuse survivor and Wellesley psychologist who treats other victims. “Pope Francis should have the presence of mind to just give him a quiet funeral and not incite the retraumatizing of victims.”
Law’s death at the age of 86 reopened nightmarish memories of rampant, unchecked child molestation throughout the archdiocese by Catholic priests taking advantage of their pristine image and moral authority in the community to avoid accountability.
Law transferred pedophile priests from parish to parish, keeping them in contact with young children and their predatory crimes a secret.
“His death just brings back all of the pain and suffering he allowed to happen, and he was the cause of it,” said Robert Costello, 56, of Plainville, a priest abuse victim from the first through eighth grades. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t remember what happened to me. … Bernie Law was a cruel, selfish bastard.”
Nonetheless, the Vatican plans the same customary funeral arrangements as any other cardinal living in Rome at his time of death.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, will preside over the funeral Mass this morning, alongside other cardinals and bishops, according to the Catholic News Agency.
The pope will preside over the final prayers. Law will then be buried at Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major.
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