Cardinal Bernard Law, forced to resign over sex scandal, dies
Rome: Cardinal Bernard Law, who was forced to resign in 2002 as archbishop of Boston over a sex-abuse scandal after a two-decade reign as one of the highest-ranking Catholic officials in the United States, has died, news media said. He was 86. Details of his death were unclear late on Monday. He lived in Rome, the New York Times said. Law's resignation in December 2002 amid a scandal over pedophile priests was a dismal end to an extraordinary career that started in the heat and protest of civil rights advocacy in the US deep south and eventually touched the highest rungs of church power in Rome. It was a deep fall for Law, who had been warmly welcomed as a bishop of great promise when he arrived to take over the Boston archdiocese in 1984. The Harvard-educated orthodox theologian was tailor-made to lead the Catholic stronghold. He was loyal to the Pope, he had administrative experience, he was familiar with Boston from his days at Harvard and as an outsider he would be able to bring objectivity and financial order to a diocese that had suffered during the school desegregation riots of the 1970s, Boston College professor and church historian Thomas O'Connor wrote in his 1998 book, "Boston Catholics". Law's fluency in Spanish and wide travels in Latin America made him an ideal candidate as the diocese welcomed new immigrants who were starting to rival the established Irish-Italian population as the dominant force in the church. Agencies