By Pam Belluck
New York Times
April 18, 2002

Boston - It is a testament to the influence of Cardinal Bernard F. Law, the archbishop of Boston, that five of the men who worked as his trusted lieutenants have been appointed to lead dioceses around the country.

Now as Cardinal Law fights to overcome the stain of a sprawling sexual abuse scandal, the spotlight focused on him is also casting shadows on several of those aides.

Documents and interviews show that the deputies had roles in the way the Boston Archdiocese responded to accusations of sexual abuse by priests. Together they paint a portrait of officials who seemed solicitous and compassionate to problem priests, dismissive or perfunctory toward those who accused the priests of molesting them or simply slow to respond to warning signs.

Most of the bishops have either apologized or explained their actions during their time in Boston.

Indeed, when the cardinal issued a statement on Tuesday night, saying that a secret trip to Rome had reaffirmed his decision to remain as archbishop, experts on the Roman Catholic Church suspected that the Vatican had decided to keep him on in part out of fear that ousting Cardinal Law could lead to some or all of the bishops losing their jobs.

"Rome has an incentive not to want him to step down because they're worried about a domino effect, especially with the bishops who served with him," said Stephen J. Pope, chairman of the theology department at Boston College.

Noting that Cardinal Law is the most senior and thus most influential Catholic leader in the United States, Dr. Pope added, "The Vatican knows the thinking will be, if Cardinal Law's vulnerable to this kind of pressure, perhaps anybody could be."

The bishops -- John B. McCormack of Manchester, N.H., Robert J. Banks of Green Bay, Wis., Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn and Alfred C. Hughes of New Orleans -- all served as high-ranking officials under Cardinal Law after he became archbishop in 1984. They have been named as defendants in lawsuits filed by people claiming they were molested by priests. All have denied wrongdoing.

Another former deputy, Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Center, N.Y., has also been named in lawsuits, but few of the documents refer to his role.

Not surprisingly, experts said, Cardinal Law's deputies reflect his philosophy. Eugene Kennedy, a former priest and author of "The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality," said that like the cardinal, they were advocates of a paternalistic, top-down structure in the church, not the more democratic, grass-roots model encouraged by the Second Vatican Council.

Some experts said the bishops were generally operating in a church culture that protected priests, seeing them as having a special status, living a life of noble sacrifices.

In an interview, Bishop Banks seemed baffled and hurt by the suggestion that he might have made mistakes.

"I was doing the best I could," he said. "I was acting in good conscience. Father McCormack and I were very serious about this issue. We were not into punishment. We were into prevention. Any case that came to us we would look at very carefully."

In Boston, church documents released in the cases of the Rev. John J. Geoghan and the Rev. Paul R. Shanley include only one indication that any of Cardinal Law's top aides had voiced objections to a known sexual abuser being allowed to continue as a parish priest.

That bishop was John M. D'Arcy, who wrote to Cardinal Law in 1984, just after Father Geoghan was assigned to a new parish. Bishop D'Arcy raised concerns that Father Geoghan might cause more scandal in light of his "history of homosexual involvement with young boys."

Bishop D'Arcy, who leads the Diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend in Indiana, declined to discuss his time in Boston.

The documents portray other senior officials as compassionate and sometimes clubby toward priests and concerned about avoiding scandal and preserving secrecy.

Bishop John B. McCormack

The names that come up most often in court documents are those of Bishop McCormack, Bishop Banks and Bishop Daily.

Bishop McCormack, 66, appears to have played a role in handling the cases of at least six priests, according to documents, interviews and newspaper reports.

Now chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' ad hoc committee on sexual abuse, Bishop McCormack became a part of Cardinal Law's administration in 1985 when he was appointed secretary of ministerial personnel. He later was asked by Cardinal Law to handle allegations of sexual abuse against priests.

In one case, a young man who claimed he had been abused by the Rev. Ronald H. Paquin met with Father McCormack in 1990, at the urging of the Rev. Frederick E. Sweeney, pastor of the church where Father Paquin was assigned. In an interview, the young man, who asked not to be identified, said he told Father McCormack that Father Paquin had touched him inappropriately when he was 14, and that he knew of other boys Father Paquin had molested.

"He showed no emotion, just sat there with his hands folded on his lap," the young man said of Father McCormack. Then, he said, Father McCormack asked, " 'What do you want?' "

The young man said it appeared that Father McCormack was offering him money, and he responded that all he wanted was for Father Paquin to be removed from parish work and hospitalized.

"I said, if he isn't removed from the church, I would go to the press or to prosecutors," the man said. "Then he clapped his hands together, and said, 'Consider it done, boys.' "

Father Paquin was removed from the parish and sent for treatment, but he was later installed as a hospital chaplain and lived in a rectory near his old parish. Ultimately, after Father Sweeney complained again, Father Paquin was sent to a home for priests. At least one other abuse complaint followed the meeting with Father McCormack, and the archdiocese later settled several lawsuits against Father Paquin, who admitted in an interview in January with The Boston Globe that he had molested boys.

A spokesman for Bishop McCormack, Patrick McGee, answered some questions about the Boston cases this week, but cut the interview short before he could be asked about the Paquin case.

The Shanley case provides the most extensive record of Bishop McCormack's involvement, and his notes and memorandums portray him as collegial to Father Shanley and slow to inform officials in other dioceses about the priest's background.

The record begins in 1985, when Father McCormack wrote to Father Shanley, then a priest in Newton, Mass., forwarding a complaint by a woman from Rochester, N.Y., about a speech in which Father Shanley had apparently spoken approvingly of sex between men and boys.

"Would you care to comment on the remarks she made," Father McCormack wrote. "You can either put it them in writing or we can get together some day about it."

Five years later, after Father Shanley was transferred to a parish in San Bernardino, Calif., Father McCormack became his principal contact in the archdiocese, promising, among other things, to help get him more money for living expenses.

In one letter, Father McCormack, who was a seminary classmate of Father Shanley, wrote sympathetically of "the loneliness that comes with leaving a parish where you and the parishioners have meant much to each other," and invoked Tennyson's words: "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

In 1991, Father McCormack visited Father Shanley in Palm Springs, Calif., at a time when Father Shanley was apparently a co-owner of a gay resort hotel. Mr. McGee, the bishop's spokesman, said the visit was for official reasons, and he did not know if Father McCormack was aware of the hotel.

In a statement last Friday, Bishop McCormack said that he "did not know about any sexual misconduct with a minor by Paul Shanley until 1993," and that he responded by informing the San Bernardino diocese, which removed Father Shanley from the parish. Mr. McGee said that not all the documents released in the case last week had been in Father Shanley's file during Bishop McCormack's tenure, and that the bishop planned to review his time in Boston and respond further next week.

The documents do not specify what happened in 1993. But that same year a nun wrote Father McCormack about a young man's allegations that he had been forced to masturbate in front of Father Shanley.

Documents suggest that Father McCormack may have had some idea about Father Shanley's problems earlier. In December 1990, he wrote to Bishop Hughes that Father Shanley "still appears not to be well," and "If he came back" from California, "I do not know what we would do with him."

The next year the archdiocese settled a lawsuit against Father Shanley, The Boston Globe has reported. And in December 1991, Father McCormack wrote another memorandum to Bishop Hughes saying, "It is clear to me that Paul Shanley is a sick person," and recommending against bringing him back to Boston.

Even after 1993, Father McCormack's handling of the Shanley case raises questions. In a 1994 letter to Father Shanley in San Diego, where he moved after being ousted from San Bernardino, Father McCormack mentioned that people who had accused Father Shanley of sexual abuse had asked where he was and if he was being supervised. Father McCormack said he had not informed the diocese of San Diego about Father Shanley.

"Anything I can do to help you, let me know," Father McCormack wrote in closing.

One document suggests that Father McCormack placed restrictions on Father Shanley at some point. A 1996 letter to Father Shanley from the Rev. Brian M. Flatley, then handling sexual abuse allegations for the archdiocese, referred to restrictions Father Shanley said Father McCormack had placed on him, though it is not clear when. The restrictions included not wearing clerical attire and celebrating Mass only in private.

In his statement, Bishop McCormack defended his approach to Father Shanley, saying, "At all times, even though I was disturbed by what he had said and done, I treated him with the same pastoral respect that I do for all people to whom I minister. I feel I was firm while still at the same time kind."

Bishop Robert J. Banks

Bishop Banks, 74, was put in charge of administration for the archdiocese for several years until 1990, when he was made bishop of Green Bay.

When Father Shanley was being transferred to California, Bishop Banks wrote to San Bernardino officials saying he was a priest "in good standing" who "has no problem that would be a concern to your diocese."

In the interview, Bishop Banks said he "did not know of any allegations" before writing that letter. He did not recall whether he had looked in Father Shanley's file before writing that letter, but if he had, he did not see any cause for concern.

In 1988, Bishop Banks mentioned in a memorandum that a patient in a psychiatric hospital where Father Shanley was chaplain accused the priest of "coming on to him" by graphically discussing sadomasochism. In the interview, Bishop Banks said Father Shanley had denied the accusation. "A patient in a mental hospital says the priest came on to him, and the priest denies it," Bishop Banks said. "What do you do?"

Bishop Banks's role in the Geoghan case is more complex. In April 1989, Bishop Banks took notes from a conversation with one of Father Geoghan's doctors: "You better clip his wings before there is an explosion. You can't afford to have him in a parish."

As a result of that conversation, Father Geoghan was sent for another round of treatment. But seven months later, after Father Geoghan was already back in the parish, Bishop Banks received a psychiatric evaluation from the treatment center that described Father Geoghan as "narcissistic and manipulative" and diagnosed him with "atypical pedophilia, in remission."

Bishop Banks wrote to the institute, saying he was "disappointed and disturbed by the report" because in earlier conversations with the doctors "I was assured that it would be all right to reassign Father Geoghan to pastoral ministry."

The bishop asked for a letter from the center expressing "the assurance I was given orally about Father Geoghan's reassignment." He received one saying it was safe for the priest to return to ministry.

"I agonized over that one," Bishop Banks said last week. "Clearly, he seemed to me, he was a pedophile. I didn't think he could be cured. I wanted him out of parish work. I was shocked that the two highly respected psychiatrists who had him in residential treatment for several weeks said he had been cured, that he was one of their best patients, that it was all right to put him back in parish ministry. I said, 'You put that in a letter.' "

Bishop Thomas V. Daily
Bishop Daily, 74, who served as chancellor and vicar general of the archdiocese until he left in late 1984 to become bishop of Palm Beach, Fla., and then Brooklyn, was a pivotal figure in handling one of the most serious complaints about Father Geoghan.

In 1982, two years after Father Geoghan had admitted abusing seven boys in a single family and been treated for pedophilia, members of that family met with Bishop Daily to complain that Father Geoghan had been seen with young boys at an ice cream parlor in their neighborhood. The bishop told the family he would "act responsibly," but he allowed Father Geoghan to go on a planned sabbatical to Italy, then return to the same parish near the family the priest had already victimized.

The family, the Dussourds, said that during their meeting Bishop Daily encouraged them to keep quiet about their allegations, something Bishop Daily acknowledged in a later deposition that he may have done. He also said in his deposition that when he placed Father Geoghan in the new parish, in 1981, he did not recall telling the parish's pastor about the complaints by the Dussourds. It was not until 1984, after one of the Dussourd relatives wrote to the new archbishop, Cardinal Law, complaining that Father Geoghan was still taking boys out at night, that the priest was removed from the parish.

Bishop Daily's deposition makes it clear that he considered it important that public scandal be avoided, and his notes to Father Geoghan while he was in treatment were generally encouraging about him returning to parish ministry.

Last month, Bishop Daily issued a statement, saying that he profoundly regrets some of his decisions in Boston.

Bishop Alfred C. Hughes

The few documents that refer to Bishop Hughes's involvement in the Geoghan and Shanley cases do not indicate that he knew of specific problems, but suggest he might not have paid attention to revealing signals. For example, in late 1991, according to his testimony at the Geoghan criminal trial, when the archdiocese received a complaint that Father Geoghan was "proselytizing" among boys at a pool, Bishop Hughes, aware that Father Geoghan had been treated for pedophilia, told him not to return to the Boys and Girls Club, but Father Geoghan was allowed to continue being a priest.

In a January statement, Bishop Hughes said: "There was no allegation about physical abuse" regarding Father Geoghan "brought to me during my tenure." In a newspaper column that same month he admitted that the Boston Archdiocese made mistakes in the Geoghan case.

Bishop Hughes wrote, "The continued acceptance of John Geoghan for priestly assignment was a tragic error."

GRAPHIC: Photos: Bishop John B. McCormack of Manchester, N.H. (Associated Press); Bishop Alfred C. Hughes of New Orleans (John Blanding/The Boston Globe); Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Center, N.Y. (Associated Press); Robert J. Banks of Green Bay, Wis., left, and Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn are among the five bishops who once served under Cardinal Bernard F. Law. (Ruby Washington/The New York Times); (Evan Siegle/Green Bay Press-Gazette)(pg. A20)

[This article was reported by Pam Belluck, Fox Butterfield and Sara Rimer and was written by Ms. Belluck.]