NORTH CAROLINA
The News & Observer

BY JIM JENKINS

The film “Spotlight” has terrific actors and a sickening, true story for the plot line: It’s 2001, and Boston Globe reporters are researching accusations that some Catholic priests have been molesting scores of young children, perhaps for decades. The city is 50 percent Catholic; the church, its most powerful institution.

The story is double-edged. There is the sexual and spiritual abuse of so many children, and the systematic coverup by the church. Priests found to have engaged in these despicable acts are routinely transferred to other parishes, where they are likely to prey upon other children.

As the world now knows, the church got a scandal for the ages, thanks to the work of some tenacious reporters on the Globe’s Spotlight investigative team, and to a new editor who was not overwhelmed by the magnitude of the story or by…