BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, head of the Roman Catholic archdiocese at the center of a national child sex scandal afflicting the church, faced a new round of questioning on Thursday over his handling of priests accused of molesting children.
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents 86 plaintiffs who accuse Law and others in the archdiocese in a civil suit of covering up abuse by defrocked priest and convicted pedophile John Geoghan, will question Law for three hours.
While the scandal over pedophile priests has receded somewhat from the public eye recently, it rumbles on.
On Wednesday evening, the Boston archdiocese said it suspended another priest while it investigates a 25-year-old allegation of sexual misconduct. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles archdiocese was hit by a class action lawsuit over sex abuse.
For Cardinal Law, the crisis has marked a sharp fall from his position as the pre-eminent U.S. prelate. He is in the midst of depositions in the Geoghan case and also in that of Father Paul Shanley, another priest facing criminal charges.
Garabedian won permission to question Law after the archdiocese backed out of a $15 million to $30 million settlement in the Geoghan case in May.
The archdiocese reneged on the deal after its Financial Council ruled it was too expensive and would use up money needed to compensate an increasing number of other alleged victims in the area.
Garabedian has been seeking to convince a judge the deal was binding and said his questions on Thursday would focus on that issue.
"It's very important that we be able to show that agreements existed that can be enforced," Garabedian said.
ROOTS OF A SCANDAL
Geoghan is already serving a nine- to 10-year sentence for fondling a child and faces at least one more criminal trial stemming from allegations by about 130 people that he molested them during his more than 30 years as a Boston-area priest.
Geoghan's case sparked outrage among U.S. Catholics, but the scandal snowballed into a national crisis after documents released at his trial showed Law and others knew about Geoghan's history of sexual abuse but still moved him from parish to parish, where he continued his abuse.
The controversy, described by many as the worst crisis to afflict the Catholic Church in modern times, forced the resignation of four bishops and cost more than 250 priests their jobs. It also led bishops to adopt a national policy to bar pedophile priests from acting as clerics.
Law, who leads Boston's 2 million Catholics, has refused to step down despite polls showing he has lost credibility.
Lawyers for the diocese in the Geoghan case have claimed that under canon, or church law, Finance Council approval was necessary to proceed with the settlement.
But in a ruling that could hurt the diocese's case, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney ruled that Law is not bound to obey the Finance Council's decision.
"The secular power of the Archdiocese of Boston ... resides exclusively in the hands of the archbishop himself, who happens to be Cardinal Law," Sweeney said in a court hearing earlier this month. She based her findings on 19th century statutes that first allowed the civil incorporation of the diocese.
She has already said it was her belief, as the judge in the lawsuit, that a settlement was in hand in March.
A trial to resolve the dispute over the settlement was set to start on July 31. Judge Sweeney will preside