Under Baron’s leadership the Globe sues the archdiocese to force the disclosure of the documents. One reason the paper printed very few stories on the subject was because a court file containing evidence that Cardinal Law knew about certain priests abusing young boys, yet did very little to stop it, was under a court seal. Spotlight’s story begins when a new editor, Marty Baron, insists that the special investigative team pursue the priest sex abuse issue in the Archdiocese of Boston. Not a few have compared the film to Alan J. Most secular film reviews note that Spotlight is really a story about investigative journalism, and how effective such journalism can be in disclosing corruption in high places and being a force for justice. Due to the subject matter, Catholic film-goers cannot help but feel Spotlight is rubbing their noses into one of the most demoralizing, pathetic, and despicable episodes in the history of Catholicism. Instead this is an intelligent, well-written, acted, and directed movie.

You will not be able to exit the multi-plex reassured that this is a horrible movie, a hastily thrown-together thoughtless Hollywood hatchet job produced by people who obviously loathe the Catholic Church and are just out to get her. If you are a devout Catholic, as is this film reviewer, and believe that no matter what, the gates of hell shall not prevail against Christ’s Church-sitting though Spotlight may be the longest two hours you’ll ever spend in a theatre. In other words, as the Globe editor Marty Baron, played by Liev Schreiber, opined, “This isn’t about one bishop it’s about the system itself.” The Spotlight team is committed to exposing a broken, dysfunctional ecclesiastical system that, instead of de-frocking offending priests or turning them over to law enforcement, often simply reassigned them while settling victims’ cases out of court in confidentiality agreements.

“It takes a village to abuse a child” refers to the manner in which priest sexual abuse of young boys was mishandled, ignored, and covered up by clergy, lawyers, school principals, teachers, public relations personnel-and even family members of the victims themselves. The title of the film, taken from the name of the investigative team, of course does double-duty as a reference to a painful journalistic laser beam cast on the priest sexual abuse scandal when the Globe story broke on January 6, 2002. The movie, “based on actual events” and starring Michael Keaton, chronicles a Boston Globe four-person investigative team’s discovery of Cardinal Bernard Law and the Archdiocese of Boston’s cover-up of the priest sexual abuse scandal. “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.” This dialogue sums up the primary lesson of the film Spotlight, currently playing in a major nationwide release.

The priests 2015 movie