UNITED STATES
Contra Costa Times
By Tim Stier, Oakland Tribune My Word © 2015 Bay Area News Group
The movie “Spotlight” opens in Bay Area theatres on Friday. It tells the story of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation team’s reporting in 2001 and 2002 on the clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston and its cover-up by Cardinal Law.
To many, this movie will draw unwanted publicity to the Catholic Church. As a priest of the Roman Catholic diocese of Oakland in voluntary exile since 2005, I welcome this publicity.
I hope this movie shines the spotlight on Oakland and San Francisco so the full extent of abuse and cover-up right here in the Bay Area may be known.
For the truth is that if the same spotlight were to shine on the Catholic Church in San Francisco and Oakland, the news would be just as heartbreaking and horrifying as in Boston.
The reason the Boston Globe Spotlight team of journalists was able to shine such light on the Catholic Church in Boston was due to the courage of abuse survivors, journalists and a judge who forced the Archdiocese of Boston to open its secret files on scores of criminal priests.
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