OME, Dec. 13 — After nearly a week of talks with senior Vatican officials, Cardinal Bernard F. Law met with Pope John Paul II today and resigned as archbishop of Boston. The pope accepted the resignation and chose Richard Gerard Lennon, an auxiliary bishop of Boston, to run the archdiocese temporarily.

In a statement suffused with sadness, Cardinal Law, the senior Roman Catholic prelate in the United States, apologized for the way he had dealt with accusations of sexual abuse by priests since he was appointed to lead the archdiocese in January 1984.

"It is my fervent prayer that this action may help the Archdiocese of Boston to experience the healing, reconciliation and the unity which are so desperately needed," Cardinal Law, 71, said. "To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes, I both apologize and from them beg forgiveness."

Cardinal Law's decision could determine whether the Archdiocese of Boston, besieged by lawsuits from people who say they were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests, will file for bankruptcy.

Boston church officials raised the bankruptcy possibility, as a way for the archdiocese to avoid paying lawsuit settlements, in the days before the cardinal left for Rome last weekend.

After the announcement in Rome, a spokesman for the archdiocese in Boston, the Rev. Christopher Coyne, said, "It's one more moment of sadness in a timeline of sadness.

"All along, the cardinal has said he wanted to remain archbishop of Boston because he felt he was the best person," Father Coyne said. "In time, it became apparent that he probably could not lead us."

He added: "He is a good man, a flawed man in some people's judgment, as he would recognize, but he has a basic goodness."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, praised the decision by the cardinal to tender his resignation and by the Vatican to accept it, after having rejected earlier this year.

"Real closure is far off for the victims, their families and all that are hurt by the terrible pain of this ordeal," Mr. Kennedy said. "But today is the first step toward a new dawn in our hearts and in our church."

Father Coyne said the release of church documents involving the scandal "obviously did have a large impact" on the cardinal's decision to step down. But he said Cardinal Law did not resign because "of petitions but because he thought it was the right thing to do for the church of Boston."

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese, Donna Morrissey, said she did not think the crisis "would be over for our lifetime."

She added, "No matter where the cardinal is or is not, or who the spokesperson is, or who the cardinal archbishop is, or the head of the office of worship, this is not over for years to come, and we should remember it always so it does not happen again."

The decision was greeted with relief by the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

"Thank heaven," said David Clohessy, the group's director. "I hope there will be thousands of Boston Catholics and hundreds of Boston survivors who will feel better as a result."

The Boston church's handling of the problem came to light in January when church files in the case of a defrocked priest and convicted pedophile, the Rev. John Geoghan, showed that Cardinal Law knew of accusations against him but chose to transfer him from parish to parish without warning parents.

The cardinal had been facing a barrage of calls to resign from his own priests and angry parishioners after revelations that he and other church leaders shuttled clergymen accused of pedophilia from parish to parish.

Cardinal Law first offered to resign in April, four months after the scandal broke, but his offer was rejected by the Vatican.

Today, he said in his statement: "To the bishops, priests, deacons, religious and laity, with whom I have been privileged to work in our efforts to fulfill the Church's mission, I express my deep gratitude. My gratitude extends as well to so many others with whom I have been associated in serving the common good; these include those from the ecumenical, Jewish, and wider interreligious communities, as well as public officials and others in the civil society."

Several Vatican officials said the cardinal was expected to return to Boston on Saturday. He is expected to retain the titles of cardinal, a designation unrelated to his administration of the archdiocese, and bishop, an ordained position.

Cardinal Law is due to give a deposition next Tuesday and Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by four young men who say they were raped by the Rev. Paul R. Shanley, 71, a priest who has become a central figure in the scandal.

Father Shanley was released on $300,000 cash bail on Thursday after spending seven months in jail on charges of child rape.

Cardinal Law's visit with the pope came as he was under more intense fire in the United States than ever for his supervision of sexually abusive priests.

Church files released over the last few weeks under a judge's order showed that Cardinal Law permitted clergymen who had abused children to remain in the ministry late into the 1990's. The files were released to lawyers representing hundreds of people who say they were sexually abused by priests in the archdiocese.

Fifty-eight priests in the Archdiocese of Boston endorsed a letter this week calling on the cardinal to step down.

On Wednesday, the Catholic lay group, the Voice of the Faithful, formed in response to the abuse crisis, also called for the cardinal to resign. Until recently, the group had refrained from personally attacking Cardinal Law. Its members met with him last month, before the latest release of church files on abuse cases.

A front-page editorial in the Boston Archdiocese's newspaper on Thursday bemoaned the fact that the church "has been brought to its knees by the scandal" that "has exposed the wretchedness of some of its ministers and the protective culture that permeated the actions of its leaders."

"The humiliation the Church in Boston is experiencing is a purification," the editorial in paper, The Pilot, continued. It concluded, "Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us."