Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston who eventually became known for his role in covering up sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church after he resigned in 2002, has died. He was 86.

Law, who was portrayed in the 2015 Oscar-winning film Spotlight about the Boston Globe's investigation into the scandals in a city where many feared crossing the Church, died in a hospital in Rome where he had moved following his resignation.

The Vatican did not give a cause of death but sources close to Law said he had been suffering from the complications of diabetes, liver failure and a build up of fluids around the heart, known as pericardial effusion.

Law had been Archbishop of Boston for 18 years when Pope John Paul II reluctantly accepted his resignation on December 13, 2002, after a tumultuous year in Church history.

A succession of devastating stories by the Boston Globe's 'Spotlight' team showed how priests who sexually abused children had been moved from parish to parish for years under Law's tenure without informing parishioners or law authorities.

The resignation sent shock waves through the American Church and began a trickle-down effect around the world, as the cover-up techniques used in Boston were discovered to have been used in numerous countries.

Law said at the time: 'It is my fervent prayer that this action may help the archdiocese of Boston to experience the healing, reconciliation and unity which are so desperately needed.

'To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes, I both apologise and from them beg forgiveness.'

Law had offered to step down several times before the then Pope accepted his resignation.

Before his resignation, Cardinal Law had been a leading Church spokesman on a wide range of issues including civil rights, international justice, abortion, poverty, Catholic-Jewish relations and ecumenism.

Bernard Francis Law was born on November 4, 1931, in Torreon, Mexico, where his father was at the time stationed as a career Air Force officer.

Law attended schools in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Barranquilla, Colombia, before graduating from Charlotte Amalie High School in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands.

He then graduated from Harvard University before enrolling into St Joseph Seminary in St Benedict, Louisiana in 1953 and later studying at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Worthington, Ohio.

He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson (now Jackson), Mississippi, in 1961, before rising in the Church, being named in 1973 by the then Pope Paul VI as bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Law gained national attention in 1975 when, amid an influx of Vietnamese refugees arriving in the US, he arranged to resettle in his diocese all 166 refugee members of the Vietnamese religious order, the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix.

Law, who became Archbishop of Boston in 1984, is said to have died without any close living relatives. 

Additional reporting by Reuters.