SIGNIS STATEMENT

SPOTLIGHT

10th of December 2015

Since its screening in competition in Venice, 2015, and its subsequent screenings at various festivals, then award nominations, including several for Best Film of 2015, the reputation of Spotlight has grown. For the statement by the SIGNIS Jury in Venice, see below.

It is primarily a film about investigative journalism, the work of the Globe in 2001. Memories of this kind of film go back to 1976 and the Watergate exposé in All the Presidents Men. At the same time as the release of Spotlight, there was a very powerful film on investigative journalism that is well worth seeing, Truth, about the NBC investigation of George W. Bush’s going into the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam – showing the detail of investigation but also highlighting the need for consistent verification otherwise the investigation is not credible.

The Boston Globe’s investigation focused on , clergy and survivors. This means that it is a film of particular Catholic interest. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, of Boston and a member of the papal committee on sexual abuse, wrote a statement in October, acknowledging the realities of abuse in the church, acknowledging that the film treats an important subject. Again, see below.

There have been films on clerical sexual abuse since 1990, quite a number, documentaries and feature films. They have been serving as a contribution to an examination of conscience by the church, an acknowledgement of realities for victims and survivors, a critique of the behaviour of church authorities, the need for a recognition of sinfulness in the church. And, in their ways, they have contributed to a better, even wiser, understanding.

Reviews of Spotlight have been very favourable. The screenplay, co-written by Josh Singer and the director, Thomas McCarthy, is carefully and strongly written. Performances are quite powerful. The film keeps audience interest. The four journalists in the Spotlight investigative team are played by Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James. At one stage it emerges that each of the four was Catholic educated but no longer practising, some “pissed off” at the church and one of them, after reading the documents, saying that he had hoped to return to the church, but now… There is of course, a sad emotional impact, audiences identifying with the journalists in their quest, disgust at the stories that are revealed, compassion for those who have suffered.

One of the difficulties about the film is its setting in 2001. Because the film is focused on Boston and the Spotlight team who undertake the investigation, the film gives an impression, a kind of American triumphalism, that it was which was the first to do this kind of investigation. In many ways, the American church was slow off the mark in acting (admitted by the journalists in the film), while investigations were under way, led by Canada, and making progress in such countries as the UK, Ireland, Australia, in the first half of the 1990s. Investigations in European countries came later. A government enquiry in Ireland was to be inaugurated not so many years after the work of the Boston Globe. In Australia, the documents Towards Healing (and the Melbourne Response) were launched at the end of 1996.

It is interesting to note that there is little or no reference to the police and their enquiries into complaints about sexual abuse. There is no discussion of reporting to the police. Investigations preceded the Spotlight investigations because Father Geoghan was arrested the same month as the first article appeared in the Boston Globe.

Reference is made in the screenplay of Spotlight to material being sent to the paper as early as 1993 and then in 1996 but the paper did not follow through at the time. The Boston story, according to the film, went into action with the appointment of the new editor, Marty Baron, who had noticed a column about offender Father and suggested to his team that it needed following up, asking about knowledge by the hierarchy, including Cardinal Bernard Law, and an investigation that would expose any systematic faults, rather than an attack on individual church hierarchy.

There had been a film, Our Fathers, 2005, where there was a focus on Boston victims of abuse, their telling their stories, the work of lawyers, encounters of some of the victims with the perpetrators, and meetings with Cardinal Law who was played by Christopher Plummer. Spotlight has very few images of themselves, concentrating on interviews with the survivors with their harrowing stories. There is a brief prologue in 1976, complaints against Father Geoghan, the child, parents, and a reassuring helping the family, suggestions that information was given to the hierarchy but not followed on up, highlighting the transfer of offending priests from one parish to another.

In fact, the main priest in this film is Cardinal Law himself, receiving Marty Baron in his house, offering to collaborate with the media, Baron assuring him of the independence of the press, and the Cardinal giving him a gift of the Catholic Catechism. He is also related glimpsed as a Catholic Charities function. But, there is a great deal of talk about him, what he knew and what he didn’t know about abusive priests, the considerable number, his working in-house on cases, working with various lawyers for settlements and their keeping all this information confidential. The documents were sealed and it is only when the Boston Globe intervenes that a judge allows them to be released. A letter written by one of the auxiliary bishops of Boston years earlier, maintaining secrecy and confidentiality, becomes part of the screenplay.

There is one priest in the film, Father Richard Paquin, who lives with his sister in retirement, interviewed by a journalist – who admits to her the truth of his experience with the boys but emphasises several times that he got no gratification from the experiences. One of the journalists discovers to his horror that his house is not very far from one of the houses designated for treatment of priests. At the end he is seen delivering a big number of papers with the article at this house.

As has been mentioned, more vivid pictures of the priests emerge from the interviews with the survivors, with the head of the organisation, SNAP (Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests), Paul Saviano who had sent material to the paper in 1996 and felt frustrated at their lack of action. Listening to his description of his own experiences, his age, the grooming, the process of trust, leading to the physical, sexual and psychological abuse, makes the point very strongly. An interview with an awkward man, groomed by Father Shanley who was later arrested, highlights once again grooming, the use of pornography, nudity and sexual gratification for a young boy who is discovering his homosexual orientation. A third man, Patrick, explains the process of the priest singling him out, the affirmation felt, and then the touch and his freezing, and the abuse. The drug scars in his arm are quite evident.

The sequences of interviews are possibly stronger in their impact, the audience listening to the words and seeing the body language of the survivors, than if there were visuals of the abuse.

The work of the investigative team is meticulous, painstakingly followed through over a very long period, checking sources, persuading interviewees to speak and be recorded, checking clips from the vast archives of Globe, trolleys and folders of them, searching in the Catholic Directories of these years and discovering so many priests listed as sick or absent or on leave. The journalists were able to make a list of 87 clergy through this method of discovery. (In 2011, Cardinal O’Malley made public the release of a list of offending clergy in Boston, their names, 159 of them.)

In the film, there are many sequences where the journalists make contact with lawyers handling victims cases, knowing that there was a great deal of confidentiality, but continually checking with them as more information became available. It is one of the Catholic lawyers who had been defending the Church’s silence who is finally overwhelmed by what has been uncovered and, emotionally reluctant, does indicate the truth about the list of abusive priests.

One of the experts over many decades is the former priest, , who has written extensively on these issues. His book becomes one of the sources for information and for the journalists to try to understand the mentality of the abusers, issues of infantile sexuality, sexual orientation, issues of clerical . He becomes a character in the film, voiced by actor , in a number of phone interviews.

Cardinal Law was transferred to Rome at the end of 2002. The film also lists a number of places and countries where abuse has taken place. In 2002, the American Catholic Bishops Conference affirmed a policy of zero tolerance in abuse cases.

Statement of the Jury - Venice Film Festival - Spotlight

SIGNIS Jury, Venice Film Festival, 2015.

When director Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight” premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 3 it received a prolonged standing ovation. The film stars Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachael McAdams, Liev Schreiber and John Slattery as the Spotlight team and publishers of the Boston Globe newspaper that successfully investigated the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston beginning in the 1990s. This investigation resulted in a series of articles in 2002 that revealed a pattern of covering up the activities of pedophile priests and hushed payoffs to dozens of child victims over many years. Stanley Tucci plays the attorney who represents the victims. With the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law in December 2002, some say as a result of the revelations, further investigations exposed similar crimes against children and consequent covert ways of dealing with accused priests - or not dealing with them but moving them around - in diocese after diocese in the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland and other countries.

"Spotlight" is an engrossing film based on the actual story of journalists who tell the biggest ongoing story about the in this century. The two key protagonists are powerful, global institutions: the press facing off against the Catholic Church.

The investigative team of the Boston Globe received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Journalism for Public Service, in 2003 for their investigative journalism. In the film, the Spotlight team admits its own culpability when it ignored information going back several years about clergy sex abuse and the Church’s failure to take action to protect children.

"Spotlight" is a straightforward and unadorned film that avoids exploiting the story. Some critics feel it is more the quality of television than cinema. Nevertheless, the enduring importance of “Spotlight” will reinforce the work that the Boston Globe did between 1999 and 2002 in calling the Catholic Church, including the Vatican, to transparency and responsibility for how it dealt with clergy who sexually abused children and what policies the Church would put in place to prevent abuse in the future and to bring the guilty to justice.

At the end of the film, before the credits, lists of parishes and dioceses where clergy abuse occurred, scroll down the screen, followed by all the countries where the scandal has spread. So perhaps the one thing missing from the film is a footnote stating that the since the 2002 articles by the Boston Globe, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued “ The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People ” to prevent further child abuse and to deal with clergy that are accused of sex abuse, including possession of child pornography. Although slow in development, in 2014 Pope Francis established the ’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Was it necessary to make a mainstream feature film to tell the story of the committed journalists who uncovered this pattern of deep scandal in the Catholic Church? Because the problem of sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy continues in the United States and in other countries around the world and victims continue to seek justice, “Spotlight” is a film that challenges the Catholic Church to be the moral leader it claims to be. With this film, cinema and journalism are indeed prophetic gifts for the Catholic Church.

Cardinal O’Malley’s full statement on Spotlight as it appeared in The Pilot :

The Spotlight film depicts a very painful time in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States and particularly here in the Archdiocese of Boston. It is very understandable that this time of the film’s release can be especially painful for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy.

The media’s investigative reporting on the abuse crisis instigated a call for the Church to take responsibility for its failings and to reform itself—to deal with what was shameful and hidden—and to make the commitment to put the protection of children first, ahead of all other interests.

We have asked for and continue to ask for forgiveness from all those harmed by the crimes of the abuse of minors. As Archbishop of Boston I have personally met with hundreds of survivors of clergy abuse over the last twelve years, hearing the accounts of their sufferings and humbly seeking their pardon. I have been deeply impacted by their histories and compelled to continue working toward healing and reconciliation while upholding the commitment to do all that is possible to prevent harm to any child in the future.

The Archdiocese of Boston is fully and completely committed to zero tolerance concerning the abuse of minors. We follow a vigorous policy of reporting and disclosing information concerning allegations of abuse. Any suspected case of abuse should be reported to civil authorities and to the Office of Pastoral Support and Outreach

Other STATEMENTS on Abuse:

Since 2002,SIGNIS has published statements on several films concerning clerical sexual abuse:

Song for a Raggy Boy (2003);

Mal Education/ Bad Education (2004)

Our Fathers (2005)

Deliver us from Evil (2006)

X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

Doubt (2008)

Oranges and Sunshine (2011)

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2013)

Calvary (2014)

To find these Statements, Google Peter Malone’s Website and scroll down to SIGNIS STATEMENTS.

For a background to films on clerical sexual abuse, two articles, one from 2005, the other from 2015, are found at the end of the SIGNIS STATEMENTS.