Bishop William Murphy, who presided over Rockville Centre Diocese during tumultuous times, dies at 85

Bishop William F. Murphy, who led the Diocese of Rockville Centre amid widespread allegations of child sex abuse by priests on Long Island in the early 2000s, overseeing reforms in response to withering attacks while remaining a fierce defender of the Roman Catholic Church, died Thursday.

Murphy headed the Rockville Centre diocese for about 15 years before retiring in 2016. The diocese announced his death Thursday but did not cite a cause. He was 85.

Murphy’s "faithful service leaves a lasting legacy on Long Island and throughout the universal Church," said Bishop John Barres, his successor, in a statement Thursday. "With a gift for friendship, he generously mentored many priests and bishops and championed the apostolate of the laity and their vital role in the public square."

Barres added: "Bishop Murphy was widely respected for his expertise in Vatican diplomacy and international relations and was deeply committed to ecumenical and interfaith dialogue."

A rocky start

Murphy's stewardship of the diocese, after serving as the No. 2 cleric for the Archdiocese of Boston, began just days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The new leader of Long Island Catholics watched from his fifth-floor office in diocesan headquarters in Rockville Centre as the second jet hit the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Among the 2,753 dead at the Twin Towers were close to 500 Long Islanders, many of them Catholics.

Four months later, The Boston Globe began an investigative series detailing a wide-ranging, decades-long clergy sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston, where Murphy had served as vicar general under Cardinal Bernard Law. In 2003, a report by the Massachusetts attorney general found the actions and secrecy "deplorable" and decried the "massive and pervasive failure of leadership." A devastating Suffolk County grand jury report, also in 2003, exposed years of sexual abuse of children by clergy from the 1960s into the 1990s — and a cover-up by the church hierarchy.

Murphy soon found himself forced to answer for his own actions alleged in one clergy sex abuse scandal while steering Long Island Catholics through another as the fourth bishop to lead one of the largest dioceses in the United States.

"I really think there was a real unfairness to how he was treated here on Long Island as though he was really the person, the bishop, on whose watch all the scandalous behavior here occurred," said Rick Hinshaw, the former editor of The Long Island Catholic, the diocesan newspaper. "That had all been long before he got here."

 A theological conservative, Murphy maintained a healthy roster of supporters, some in high places. With his famous Irish charm — former Nassau County District Attorney Denis Dillon once compared him to the legendary Boston politician Tip O’Neill — Murphy could win over even some detractors.

That charm was on display one morning in 2011 as parishioners filed out of St. Agnes Cathedral after a memorial Mass marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

"Good morning, dear!" Murphy called to an elderly woman as she slowly made her way down the cathedral steps. "How are you? Step by step. Don't go quick. We need you."

Interfaith leader

His work on interfaith relations won praise from Muslims, Jews and other groups. He had been well-known in Boston for his close friendship and work with a Jewish civic leader, Leonard P. Zakim.

On Long Island, Murphy had something of an empire to manage, overseeing an entity that at the time was the second-largest nongovernmental employer on Long Island, with 19,800 employees in 2011, including Catholic school and hospital workers.

But with Mass attendance and donations down, he had to make cuts, including to Catholic schools. He oversaw a series of closings as enrollment fell.

Murphy was born on May 14, 1940, in the West Roxbury section of Boston, and attended public schools, including the prestigious Boston Latin School, where his father was a history teacher.

A gifted student, Murphy attended Harvard University but left after a year to pursue the priesthood. After his ordination in 1964 in Rome, he returned to Boston where he spent a decade in local parishes. He later returned to Rome, serving on the Vatican’s Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace.

By 1987, Murphy had returned to Boston, where he eventually was named an auxiliary bishop and, in 1993, vicar general.

With command of Italian, French and Spanish, Murphy also played a role on the international stage. He served as a member of three U.S. government delegations to Haiti in 1987, 1990 and 1991, and accompanied Pope John Paul II on a historic visit to Cuba in 1998.

In 2001, John Paul appointed Murphy bishop of Rockville Centre. He oversaw the diocese until Barres' installation Mass on Jan. 31, 2017.

Long Island scandal

By his own admission, Murphy’s start in Rockville Centre was tough as the sex abuse scandal broke. A group of dissident lay Catholics formed a local chapter of Voice of the Faithful, demanding reforms to the diocese. They started a potentially devastating campaign to withhold donations. At one point, they called for Murphy’s resignation.

The feud partly led to a highly unusual 2003 letter, signed by more than 50 of the diocese’s approximately 400 priests, expressing concern about widespread dissatisfaction with the bishop.

Sunday Mass collections dropped, so did church attendance. Many Catholics said they were repulsed by the scandal and other problems. Murphy contended that he was doing his best to respond.

Murphy was also fending off questions after the Massachusetts report said that as the vicar of the Boston archdiocese, he had "placed a higher priority on preventing scandal and providing support to alleged abusers than on protecting children from sexual abuse."

He denied the report's allegations.    

Murphy separately caught flak for a $1.1 million renovation of one section of the former convent next to St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre as his new residence, complete with a double Sub-Zero refrigerator; a professional range top; and an under-counter, temperature-controlled, wine-storage cabinet for up to 50 bottles. To top it off, the renovation required the permanent ejection of six nuns who had been living in the building.

Strength gained

Murphy contended that he needed the residence to meet with priests and church dignitaries, among others. But the battered bishop later acknowledged that he was caught off guard, and overwhelmed, by everything coming at him.

"I wish that I had spent more time listening to some of the people, including some of the Voice of the Faithful, back in 2003," he told Newsday in 2007. "My reason but not my excuse is that I was trying to build up something that was just so vast and was coming at me from every single angle. I was doing the best I could, but I'm a limited person."

He added that he had recently visited a parish he had avoided because of conflict there.

"I went out to apologize to them. And I said, 'I was so battered at that point personally, I didn't know where I was turning,' " Murphy recalled.

In February 2004, Murphy issued his most conciliatory comments to date to victims of the abuse.

"For all this I have apologized many times before. I apologize again because I know that, as a Catholic bishop in the United States, I will go to my grave with the knowledge that I can never make up or restore to the victims the innocence lost and suffering experienced day in and day out by those who were victimized as well as their families," he wrote in a public letter posted on the diocesan website.

Still, Murphy also argued that the diocese and the Roman Catholic Church nationwide came out of the scandal stronger after instituting what he and others called stringent protections against sex abuse. In a 2011 interview with Newsday, Murphy said the diocese had "done well" in its response.

"Probably there is no institution in America today in which a child is more safe than in the Catholic Church because of all that we've done," he said. The scandal "should not be put in the past, but neither should it be used as an excuse for people to beat up the church."