O'Malley To Boston Church's Rescue

Pope John Paul II named Bishop Sean Patrick O'Malley to lead the Boston Archdiocese Tuesday, sending a recognized leader in the battle against clerical sex abuse into the epicenter of the scandal in the United States.

O'Malley, 59, succeeds Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned amid public outrage in December.

"I feel acutely aware of my own deficiencies in the face of the task at hand," O'Malley told a news conference Tuesday.

"The path has never been easy but today, it seems overwhelming," he said. "Still, I feel privileged to be called to serve in the Church in Boston and hope that in some way, I might become an instrument of peace and reconciliation in a church in need of healing."

The new Archbishop of Boston has a good record of cracking down on sex abuse, reports CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey in Rome. He did it in Fall River, Mass., where he brought in new procedures for screening, then in Palm Beach, Fla., where two previous bishops had been implicated in sex scandals. O'Malley got a lot praise for being honest with the victims and their families, not sweeping things under the carpet.

"The Vatican would like this scandal to go away, but knows that it won't, so they're bringing in people who are competent to deal with it," said Pizzey.

The Vatican announced O'Malley's appointment in its daily bulletin. It also named his successor in Palm Beach, Bishop Gerald Barbarito, currently bishop of Ogdensburg, N.Y.

"The devastating effects of sexual exploitation of minors by members of the clergy have wounded us all, beginning with the victims themselves and their families who suffered the poisonous aftermath of abuse," O'Malley said. "The entire Church feels the pain."

"I think they've realized that this archdiocese needs some serious help, and hopefully they've picked the right guy to do it," said Tom Fulchino, who was abused by Father James Porter in 1959 in Fall River and whose son was abused by Father John Geoghan in Boston a generation later.

"He's got to come in with some fresh people, some fresh advisors, including the attorneys and the inner circle, as they call it, in the Archdiocese of Boston," Fulchino told CBS radio station WBZ-AM in Boston. "I feel he really has to clean house."

"The biggest challenge he has is to take the reins of control over from the insurers and the lawyers, because right now it's legal and insurance matters that are driving the whole relationship with the survivors and not pastoral concerns," Steven Pope, chairman of the Boston College Theology Department said.

Pope said O'Malley is informal and a great diplomat for the Church.

"He has to show, as he's done in the past, that he is compassionate to victims, and that's his real strength, and that should be no problem," he told WBZ. "The difficulty is going to be how to bring these different groups together in the Archdiocese."

"He's a cool operator. He has a different approach, not abrasive at all. He has a calming influence," said Pete Calderone, who was abused by Porter and has dealt with O'Malley.

Another of Porter's victims said he hadn't been satisfied with his dealings with O'Malley.

"He's slick. He's good public relations. But as far as deep inside, he's not really going to solve the problem," said Frank Fitzpatrick. "The reason is, he's just there to quiet things down."

Law resigned last year following revelations he allowed priests accused of molestation to keep serving. The former archbishop was widely criticized for his handling of the scandal that ensnared dozens of priests and eventually spread to dioceses around the country.

O'Malley has the backing of the Roman Catholic Church.

"O'Malley would not be moving from one parish to another to deal with this problem if the Vatican didn't say that it wanted him to do it," Pizzey said. "Those kinds of appointments are made at the very highest levels of the Church and the pope would have had a hand in it. He's someone that the Vatican obviously trusts. They're looking for someone that politicians call a 'safe pair of hands' to deal with this problem. They're not putting in someone the pope and senior advisors aren't totally confident in."

"It's almost like a gift of God for Boston," said Ray Flynn, the former Boston mayor and ambassador to the Vatican, before the announcement was made.

The archdiocese counts 2.1 million Catholics among its parishioners. About 500 lawsuits are pending alleging that Boston church officials were negligent when they transferred accused priests from parish to parish rather than removed them.

When he resigned in December, Law became the highest-ranking Church figure to be brought down by the scandal. He is now a resident chaplain at the Sisters of Mercy of Alma convent in Clinton, Md.