HOLLYWOOD (CA)
Canton Repository
By Shawn Hubler Los Angeles Times
HOLLYWOOD -- “Twist of Faith,” the moving Oscar-nominated documentary debuting Tuesday on HBO, opens with the words “Toledo, Ohio,” and the taped deposition of a priest.
The Middle American town, the beefy, small-mouthed cleric -- the images are haunting, and they’re meant to be, for they also haunt Anthony Comes, the firefighter, father, husband, hometown guy and working-class Roman Catholic who is at the heart of this documentary and who, as it turns out, has just learned that his brand new dream house is five doors down from the parochial high school counselor who he says molested him when he was 14.
What follows is a riveting and heartbreaking account of one man’s journey into the thick of what most Americans now know as the “pedophile priest scandal” -- media shorthand for a human trauma that has tended to be framed as particular to Catholics.
In fact, as the documentary shows to grim effect, the emotional core of what happened to so many families is far more widespread.