NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Cardinal Bernard Law, one of the most influential Catholic prelates in the United States until he resigned in disgrace for covering up decades of sexual abuse, died yesterday. He was 86.

The Harvard-educated former archbishop, who rubbed elbows with presidents and promoted social justice for immigrants and the poor, died in Rome. He had moved there after his 2002 resignation as the abuse scandal unleashed a major crisis in the Catholic Church that continues to reverberate around the world.

Evidence that he protected paedophile priests for years and hushed up their abuse of children to protect the church hierarchy shattered his once-venerated career and triggered an avalanche of molestation scandals reaching from Ireland to Australia and from Haiti to the Philippines.

Law died yesterday after a long illness, the Vatican said. Pope Francis will perform last rites at his funeral today at Saint Peter’s Basilica, triggering outrage from abuse victims who say he deserves a more ignominious end.

The molestation scandal hit Boston like an avalanche in January 2002, with hundreds of people coming forward to claim they had been abused by priests. Mushrooming allegations and mounting pressure ultimately forced Law to resign that December.

The case became the subject of the Oscar-winning 2015 Hollywood movie “Spotlight”, centred on how the Boston Globe newspaper uncovered the scandal — work that earned the Globe’s investigative team a Pulitzer Prize.

“I would prefer to see him tied to a cross and burned,” victim Alexa MacPherson told a news conference in Boston yesterday.

“I don’t think the pope gets it at all,” she said. “It’s time to bring forth change, and if you say that you want that, then you don’t celebrate this man’s legacy.”

“I just hope that man suffered every day of his life, knowing what he did,” said fellow victim Robert Costello, 56. “I think he should die like Osama bin Laden,” Costello added, referring to the Al-Qaeda leader’s burial at sea with no plaque or marked site.”

Law was initially accused of moving priest John Geoghan from parish to parish, despite knowing that Geoghan was believed to have abused up to 130 boys.

The Spotlight reporters later discovered that the local Catholic hierarchy, led by Law, systematically covered up sexual abuse by 90 priests over decades.

In 2015, the National Catholic Reporter said the US Catholic Church had incurred nearly US$4 billion in costs related to the abuse crisis over 65 years, well above the nearly US$3 billion figure often cited.

Born in Torreon, Mexico on November 4, 1931, the son of a US Air Force colonel, Law grew up on military bases before studying medieval history at Harvard University.

He began his priesthood studies in 1953 and was ordained in Mississippi in 1961, becoming known nationally for his ecumenical work on social welfare and civil rights.