IRELAND
The Avondhu
March 14, 2018
By Donal O’Keeffe
Former President Mary McAleese is a decent and fiercely-intelligent woman who is hugely respected by the Irish people. She’s in for a disappointment, though, if she thinks the Catholic Church values her opinion any more than it does that of any other woman, writes Donal O’Keeffe.
They gave Cardinal Bernard Law a grand old send-off all the same last December. Granted, the turnout in St Peter’s Basilica was clearly sparser than anticipated, with ushers stacking away the chairs which had been set out for an expected larger crowd, but Law’s funeral Mass was presided over by senior Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, and the coffin was blessed by Pope Francis himself.
No mention was made at Law’s funeral of the reason he had been forced to resign on December 13 2002, after 18 years as Archbishop of Boston. Law’s resignation came at the culmination of a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles by Boston Globe reporters, in which they outlined how paedophile priests were moved – under Law’s watch – from parish to parish without notifying parishioners or authorities. This was dramatised in the superb 2015 film ‘Spotlight‘, a film I watched with a strange feeling of déjà vu, because – of course – we in Ireland had seen the Boston story before ever Boston saw it.
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