After a long life of devotion to the poor, the downtrodden and to his faith, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley officially retired from the Catholic Church at the end of June. O’Malley came to St. Thomas from Washington, D.C. as a priest and was ordained a bishop at Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral on Aug. 2, 1984.
But O’Malley’s greatest legacy comes from the 32 years he spent addressing child sexual abuse committed by Catholic clergy members. A few weeks after the cardinal’s last day of service, his childhood friend sat among the pews in the St. Thomas cathedral, recalling O’Malley’s beginnings as a priest.
Fr. Simeon Gallagher said that from the time he was in Catholic seminary, O’Malley was well known for his proficiency in several languages and was sent on missions to Latin America.
Because of that familiarity, the young priest was invited to speak at a celebration service at the St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where members of the Argentinian military were present, Gallagher said.
At the time, Argentina was in internal strife. “He gave a homily, a confrontive and challenging homily, and all of the military brass of Argentina got up and left the cathedral halfway through his homily because they didn’t want to hear what he had to say,” Gallagher said. “His engagement with people has always been in defense of the poor, the struggling — whether they are street people in Washington or diplomats trying to find their way in the diplomatic world of tension and struggle mostly in Latin America.”
And since the Virgin Islands were under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Washington, O’Malley’s next stop was St. Thomas. From 1984 to 1992, the newly ordained bishop led St. Thomas Catholics through recovery from major hurricanes, promoted outreach and engagement, built a hospice for people suffering from AIDS, and established Bethlehem House for the homeless.
But the work O’Malley became best known for began when he left to serve on the U.S. mainland, including Fall River, Massachusetts; Palm Beach, Florida; and Boston. There, he found priests accused of molesting children and youth.
In a video message found on a website called Protection, Prevention and Healing – Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston – the then-Archbishop of Boston described a sense of shame that enveloped the church.
“Catholics have lost patience with us. Civil society had lost confidence in us, but I am not without hope, and I do not succumb to despondent acceptance that our failures cannot be corrected,” O’Malley said in a statement on the Archdiocese of Boston website.
Efforts to identify and remove sex offenders, to counsel and compensate victims continued throughout the rest of O’Malley’s ministry. At the time of his 80th birthday and retirement on June 29, “the Feast of St. Peter and Paul,” Gallagher said, the Catholic cardinal of Boston served as president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors — formed by Pope Francis to extend protection for children and vulnerable adults throughout the church, worldwide.
