METHUEN (ma)
St. Monica Parish

This weekend a movie was released in the cinemas called Spotlight. It is a dramatic portrayal of a very real and painful scandal in the life of the Church in the Archdiocese of Boston. It depicts the work of The Boston Globe Spotlight Team in breaking the story of the sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Archdiocese in January, 2002. The scandal was amplified by the failure of bishops to remove priests from ministry and in some cases moving them to other parishes and even other parts of the country where they abused more children. Though the number of abusive priests was small as a percentage of the total number of priests, sadly many of these priests had a large number of victims. I am aware that St. Monica Parish suffered tremendous pain, particularly at the hands of one notorious priest. It…