Nine Harvard professors have sent a letter calling for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard F. Law ’53, the Catholic archbishop of Boston who allowed priests accused of child molestation to continue working for the church.

“I just felt in conscience I needed to write it,” said Loker Professor of English Robert J. Kiely ’60, who authored the letter early last month. “I don’t think it will have any effect at all. Maybe it will have some embarrassment effect.”

Law and the Archdiocese of Boston are currently embroiled in a controversy over allegations that, over a period of decades, they did not take action after learning that parish priests were sexually abusing children. Former priest John Geoghan, who was sentenced Feb. 21 to nine to 10 years in prison for one count of child molestation, is accused of abusing at least 130 more children during his 30 years in the archdiocese.

While Law has publicly apologized for his actions, Kiely wrote in the letter that “repentance...includes doing penance as well as words.”

Professor of Education and Social Policy Gary A. Orfield, who co-signed the letter, said that Law had committed a “failure of the sort that would lead to the dismissal of any other leader in the United States.”

“In Catholic doctrine you admit what you’ve done wrong and you try to make up for it,” he said.

In a statement released on Feb. 10, Law said he did not plan to resign and that he intended to help revise the Church’s policy for responding to complaints about sexual abuse. He said that “a bishop is not a corporate executive” but instead plays the “role of a father.”

“When there are problems in the family, you don’t walk away,” Law said.

But in the letter, Kiely said that another leader could better initiate reforms and Law was “more than a manager” and was a “symbol” of the Catholic Church.

“The symbolic act of repentance can only be performed by you,” he said.

Like Kiely, Orfield said he did not expect the letter to convince Law to resign, but said he believed the church needed to recognize the opinions of lay Catholics in the Boston area.

“A lot of educated professionals who are trying to think through the various dimensions, they all have voices that need to be heard by the cardinal and the hierarchy in the church,” Orfield said. “This is being done by people who want the church to live up to its ideals and to stop hurting itself.”

Kennedy School Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management Mary Jo Bane, who also signed the letter calling for Law’s resignation, began a drive last month to convince community members to withhold donations to the archdiocese until the Church begins reforms. The Archdiocese of Boston is currently in the midst of a $300 million capital campaign.

“Withholding contributions is one of the few means of influence that lay Catholics have,” Bane said. “It’s one of the few ways in which they can send a signal they are dissatisfied with the way things are being handled.”

Bane wrote a Feb. 3 op-ed piece in the Boston Globe and has also been circulating a letter to area Catholics calling for the halt in donations. But she said she did not know how effective her appeal for withholding contributions has been.

An archdiocese spokesperson was unavailable for comment on the professors’ letter yesterday, but the Boston Globe reported yesterday that the Cardinal had not yet received the letter.

In addition to Kiely, Bane and Orfield, the other professors who signed the letter were Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Luis M. Giron Negron, Professor of History James T. Kloppenberg, Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography James J. McCarthy, Thompson Professor of Education and Society Richard J. Murnane, Professor of Romance Languages Lino Pertile and Pope Professor of Latin Richard J. Tarrant.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.