ROME
Crux
December 21, 2017
By John L. Allen Jr.
ROME – Before an unusually small congregation of mourners, albeit one that featured U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich and her husband, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a funeral Mass for Cardinal Bernard Law was celebrated behind the main altar in St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday afternoon.
Pope Francis took part in the ritual, not celebrating the Mass but offering final prayers at the end, reading the prescribed prayers for the final commendation of the deceased to God and the final valediction.
The Vatican’s foreign minister, British Archbishop Richard Paul Gallagher, was also on hand for the funeral Mass.
The main celebrant for the liturgy was Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, acting in his capacity as the Dean of the College of Cardinals. His role was controversial, given that like Law himself, Sodano has a checkered history when it comes to the child sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church.
For much of the late 20th century, Sodano was a patron of the late Mexican Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legion of Christ, whose pattern of sexual abuse and misconduct was eventually recognized by his own order following a Vatican investigation that Sodano had opposed.
In 2010, Sodano again stirred controversy when he suggested during an Easter homily that critics of Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of sexual abuse controversies were engaging in “petty gossip.”
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