VENICE
The Hollywood Reporter
by Ariston Anderson 9/3/2015
“I hope the Vatican will use this movie as a perfect opportunity to begin to right these wrongs,” Tom McCarthy said.
Tom McCarthy’s thriller Spotlight has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival Thursday. The true-life story tells follows the investigative Boston Globe team, played by Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Brian d’Arcy James and Rachel McAdams, that pulled back the curtains on how the Church covered up Boston’s child molestation scandal. The consequences of the Boston Globe’s work reverberated throughout the Catholic Church around the world.
What starts as a follow-up story into child molestation expands into a year-long investigation, revealing dozens of complicit priests, cardinals, law officials and lawyers who helped cover-up hundreds of cases of abuse within Boston. While some estimates mark 6 percent of priests guilty of molestation, the film points out the dual abuse pattern of its victims, both on a physical and spiritual basis. The case helped open the door for other cities to follow suit, revealing a crime that had infested the Catholic Church on a global scale.
At the press conference in Venice, Italian media questioned the impact the film might have on the Church’s actions today. Pope Francis has recently set up a Vatican tribunal to hear cases of bishops who failed to protect children within their own dioceses.
Actor Stanley Tucci, who plays lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, who won millions in settlements for his clients in Boston, was extremely supportive of the Pope. “I think this new Pope is extraordinary and he’s bringing the Catholic Church into the 21st century and I think if anybody is to help stop such abuses in the future it would be him.”
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