Betrayal (35 page)

October 19, 1996. Geoghan requests retirement.

December 12, 1996. Cardinal Law grants Geoghan senior priest retirement status. Seventeen months later, Geoghan was defrocked.

May 8, 1998. The notice that Geoghan was officially defrocked on February 17, 1998.

December 9, 1999. The Statement of the Case,
Commonwealth v. John J. Geoghan,
filed in Middlesex Superior Court.

October 4, 1977. A shocked woman writes about the topics of a recent speech given by Rev. Paul R. Shanley that included subjects such as “homosexual acts are not sinful” and “celibacy is impossible.”

February 1979. Shanley is quoted as speaking positively about man-boy love at a conference on the topic in Boston.

February 12, 1979. Cardinal Medeiros tells the Vatican that Shanley “is a troubled priest.” Medeiros also lays out his views on homosexuality “as a pastoral, spiritual and moral problem.”