The Cardinal will be forgiven for his failings in office after keeping a low profile for a year or two and retiring to a monastery in Massachusetts.

Cardinal Law, 71, is due to testify before a grand jury in Massachusetts tomorrow on cases of sexual abuse by clergy after being subpoenaed by Thomas Reilly, the state’s Attorney-General, in an investigation into alleged abuses by Father Paul Shanley. State officials said yesterday that the hearing may be delayed because of the trauma that Cardinal Law is said to have suffered.

Lawyers for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said that they planned to file 30 or 40 further complaints against priests, in addition to the 450 lawsuits that are threatening the Boston Archdiocese with bankruptcy.

Vatican officials admitted that Cardinal Law had to go because “popular pressure built up to the point where the situation became intolerable . . . the management of the Boston Archdiocese was at risk”. The diocesan financial crisis and the slump in donations were also a factor.

Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer for one of the victims’ groups, said that no one should imagine the problem was over. Victims’ groups said that they would now target Cardinal Edward Egan, the Archbishop of New York, and Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles.

Vatican sources have said that Cardinal Law will be offered a job in the Roman Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy. It is not clear what the post would be. In the past the Cardinal has been mentioned as a possible head of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, or Propaganda Fide.

Vatican sources said that the Pope held Cardinal Law in high esteem and that he had helped to formulate the new Catholic Catechism, a sign of the confidence he enjoyed. The Cardinal was also close to President Bush and had powerful supporters in the Vatican.

It emerged that Cardinal Law had submitted his written resignation to the Pope last Monday, the day after his arrival from Boston. The pontiff accepted it on Friday after concluding that pressure from Boston parishioners and priests had become overwhelming.

Father Bob Bowers, one of 58 Boston priests who signed the petition asking the Cardinal to step down, said that it had been “one of the most painful and sad experiences of my life. But people in our parish were so upset and enraged, it had to be done.”

Michael Novak, America’s leading writer on Catholicism, said that the Vatican’s belated reaction was “because the Pope is not like a colonel in the Marines, he cannot just go out and blast his bishops as if they were soldiers”. He said that the scandal was bigger than the Catholic Church — “there are sexually abusive priests in Protestant denominations, too”.

Cardinal Law said in Boston yesterday that he did not know what his future in the church would be. “I need to turn my thoughts and prayers toward figuring that out,” he said. “After all, I am still young.”

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