Being Archbishop of Boston is not an easy job at the best of times. When Cardinal Seán O’Malley took the post, it was the very worst of times. He succeeded the late Bernard Francis Law, one of the most scandal-ridden prelates of the modern era. Law’s gross mishandling of paedophile priests in his archdiocese made the Church in Boston synonymous with old men in Roman collars molesting altar boys. The laity’s trust in their clergy collapsed, which in turn contributed to a vocations crisis that has forced the archdiocese to close or merge over 250 parishes in the last year. O’Malley rose to the occasion. He has been so diligent in cleaning up Boston that several Italian Vatican-watchers floated the possibility of his succeeding Benedict XVI in 2013. He is the most papabile American cardinal, and arguably the most powerful bishop in the United States. When Pope Francis was elected, he found good use for the soft-spoken Capuchin. The following year, O’Malley was chosen to lead the Pontifical Commission for the Defence of Minors. The establishment of the commission was central to Francis’s image as a reformer; that he entrusted the initiative to O’Malley is powerful testimony to his faith in him. But O’Malley’s responsibility for dealing with sexual abuse in the Catholic Church became something of a liability for the Holy Father last month, when Francis accused the victims of Chilean priest Fernando Karadima of “calumny” for claiming that his bishop, Juan Barros, knew of his predatory behaviour and yet refused to act on the information. "You, in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward,” the Pope said in a press conference. The laity, and the media in particular, were outraged – and nowhere more than in Boston. Kevin Cullen, a columnist for the centre-left Boston Globe, heaped scorn on the Pope: