CANADA
Vancouver Sun
People have to be ready for the truth before it can be revealed.
That’s a theme of the riveting, award-winning movie, Spotlight, which recounts how the Boston Globe newspaper laid bare an ecclesiastical and political coverup of rampant pedophilia by more than 87 Roman Catholic priests and brothers.
After years of Boston Globe staff ignoring clergy abuse cases, the newspaper’s investigative team, called Spotlight, broke its explosive story in 2002. It led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law and helped elevate clergy abuse into an international issue, which continues to reverberate.
The Canadian media, however, produced many stories about widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests and brothers much earlier than the Boston Globe. The spate of Canadian articles began in 1989 with Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel Orphanage scandal, first reported by The Sunday Express under publisher Michael Harris.
That was 12 years before the Boston exposé. Nevertheless, the historical timeline of 20th-century Catholic abuse that is on the Spotlight film’s website contains no mention of the mass abuse of Mount Cashel orphans (which powerfully impacted two Metro Vancouver Catholic schools) or scores of other Canadian cases.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.