MASSACHUSETTS
NewBostonPost
By John Farrell | November 5, 2015
I know a priest whose ecclesiastical career in this city was ruined because he had the temerity to praise the Boston Globe Spotlight team’s investigation of the clerical abuse scandal—in front of a bishop.
It’s been well over a decade since the story broke and Cardinal Law was forced to resign. And “Spotlight,” co-written and directed by Tom McCarthy, which opens today in a limited release, is a superb account of the Globe’s exposure of a scandal that still affects Boston.
Full disclosure: my late father, David J. Farrell, was a political columnist for The Boston Globe from 1972-1985.
I attended B.C. High in the late 1970s, and one of the priests there, whose sexual abuse of students forms a key piece in the storyline, was my junior year history teacher. So, watching the movie portray both of these institutions and their leaders so accurately was both strange — and gratifying.
I did not expect the film to be so good. The story opens with a brief prelude, in 1976, showing a young Irish Catholic police officer on the sidelines as he observes the secretive settlement arranged between the family of a molested boy and representatives of the Archdiocese. We learn the priest responsible for the molestation is the notorious Fr. John Geoghan. – See more at:
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