Cardinal Bernard Law, the Boston archbishop who became one of the most influential Catholic leaders in the United States before resigning in 2002 amid revelations that he and other prelates had known for years of rampant child molestation by parish priests, a scandal that has been called the church's darkest crisis of the modern era, has died at 86.
His death was reported by the Associated Press, citing an unnamed official of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Law was recently hospitalized in Rome. No other details were immediately available.
For more than half a century, Cardinal Law dedicated himself to the church, an institution that became his home after his itinerant upbringing as the son of a commercial and military aviator.