February 28, 2005

Agonizing odyssey leads Toledoan into Oscar spotlight

TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade

By DAVID YONKE
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR

As a child growing up in Toledo, Tony Comes would sit in the Showcase Cinemas, gaze up at the screen at the larger-than-life actors, and fantasize about someday being an actor.

"I wanted to see my name on the screen," said the 34-year-old Toledo firefighter.

Tony Comes, in a scence from the Oscar-nominated documentary "Twist of Faith," received a $55,000 settlement from the Toledo diocese last year, but he did not want any money for his part in the film.

Tonight, that dream will come true. But it's not the way he imagined.

Though Mr. Comes will don a tuxedo and walk onto a red carpet and down the aisle to sit among the movie elite, his role in an Oscar-nominated film is nothing glamorous.

He is the subject of one of the darkest documentaries ever considered for an Academy Award: sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

Posted by kshaw at February 28, 2005 11:04 AM