Pope's Commission to Protect Children Watch Oscar-nominated Spotlight

By Stephanie Kirchgaessner
The Guardian
February 4, 2016

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/05/pope-commission-protect-children-watch-oscar-nominated-spotlight

Pope Francis has promised there will be ‘zero tolerance’ for clerical sex abuse and cover-ups. Photograph: NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

The members of Pope Francis’s commission to protect children have seen the Oscar-nominated film Spotlight together amid criticism that the pontiff needs to follow through on his promise of “zero tolerance” for clerical sex abuse and cover-ups.

The film, which has been nominated for six Academy Awards, tells the inside account of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Boston Globe who in 2001 doggedly pursued and exposed systematic sex abuse – and subsequent cover-ups to hide the abuse – by clergy and top church officials in their city.

Peter Saunders, an abuse survivor and member of the commission, told the Guardian that another commission member had suggested they watch the film together on the eve of their plenary meeting even though many individual members, including head of the commission Cardinal Sean O’Malley, had already seen the film. The 17-member Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors meets twice a year.

“We got in touch with Phil Saviano – one of the characters in the film – and he got in touch with the producers in LA,” Saunders said. The special screening of the film was shown near the Vatican but not inside Vatican City.

While Pope Francis has won acclaim for his role as a diplomat and advocate for the poor and the environment, many activists who are survivors of abuse appear to be growing frustrated and angry with what they see as a pope who is not doing enough to combat ongoing problems in the church.

In an piece for the Crux, a Catholic news website, survivors said the church was still not holding cardinals and bishops accountable for their failure to protect children, including in the recent resignations of Robert Finn of Kansas City and John Clayton. Both were in effect forced to resign because of their handling of abuse cases in their diocese but the reasons were not publicly acknowledged and both are still bishops.