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Faculty members suggest Cardinal Law resignation

By Globe Staff, 3/7/2002

ine Catholic Harvard professors have signed a letter calling on Cardinal Bernard F. Law to step down.

The academics, led by English professor Robert Kiely, signed the letter at a recent dinner gathering for Catholics on the Harvard faculty. Kiely is faculty advisor for the Harvard Catholic Student Association and a former member of advisory boards for St. John's Seminary, Georgetown University, and Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

In the letter, first reported by The Tablet, a British Catholic newspaper, the faculty suggests Law should resign as an act of penance.

''You have contributed to and multiplied the sufferings of children and their families by repeatedly sending a pedophile among them as a minister of God,'' the letter says.

The other signatories are professors Mary Jo Bane (public policy), Luis M. Giron Negron (comparative literature), James T. Kloppenberg (history), James J. McCarthy (ocean science), Richard J. Murnane (education), Gary A. Orfield (education and social policy), Lino Pertile (Romance languages), and Richard Tarrant (Latin).

Law's spokeswoman, Donna M. Morrissey, said ''The archdiocese of Boston hasn't even received the letter, but this letter would seem more appropriate as a letter to the editor.''

This story ran on page A16 of the Boston Globe on 3/7/2002.
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