The National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen has a lengthy-but worth reading-update on Cardinal Bernard Law’s life in Rome, five years after his mishandling of the clergy sex abuse crisis led to his resignation as archbishop of Boston.

Law is now overseeing the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. It’s a post that his critics still contend he does not deserve, not to mention his seat on a number of Vatican panels, including the one that controls the appointment of bishops.

Allen, unfortunately, didn’t get to talk to Law, but he pieces together glimpses of his life from friends and associates. It’s not an altogether happy picture. In fact, he sounds quite lonely:

“Given that the details of Law’s handling of notorious abuser-priests such as John Geoghan and Paul Shanley have been endlessly dissected, the first question many Americans ask about him today boils down to this: “Does he get it?” That is, does Law understand the suffering the sexual abuse crisis caused, and his own role in failing to come to grips with it? Or is he, to use the language of pop psychology, “in denial”?

Only Law could provide the answer, and he’s not talking. What friends do report, however, is that the 76-year-old Law, an only child without close living relatives, has gradually achieved spiritual calm-though only after considerable struggle, they say, with what one described as “a deep wound.”

“He knows he made some bad decisions that caused harm to other people, and this is the consequence,” one American priest said who is close to Law. “Yet he struggled with what he saw as a lack of support from his priests, and a failure to recognize his contributions-his commitment to foreign missions, to the poor, to the unborn, and so on. It’s almost as if the good he did was just cast aside. He had to learn to put himself in God’s hands.”

“He has survived on the basis of his own spiritual life,” another Law confidante said. “He’s in exile, doing penance.””