ITALY
The Local
Pope Francis still has to prove the Church is serious about addressing sex abuse by priests, according to the director of a major new film about how the damaging scandal was exposed in the United States.
Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight”, a newsroom drama that focuses on how the Boston Globe broke a local story that was to become a global crisis for the Church, had its premiere on Thursday at the Venice Film Festival.
Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams as key members of the Globe’s investigations team, the film recounts the paper’s pursuit of evidence of how the local Catholic hierarchy, headed by Cardinal Bernard Law, systematically and, at times, cynically, covered up for abusive priests in their midst.
By the time the Globe’s team had earned their Pulitzer Prize it had become clear that the Church in the Boston area had, for years, harboured more than 70 predatory paedophiles, shuffling them from parish to parish when the rumours got too loud and acting swiftly to ensure any legal suits were settled silently and secretly.
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