ROME
New York Times
The Carpetbagger
By CARA BUCKLEY FEB. 5, 2016
“Spotlight,” considered an Oscar front-runner, follows The Boston Globe exposé of the Roman Catholic Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse by priests. And on Thursday the film was finally shown to figures at the heart of the story: it was privately screened for a Vatican commission entrusted with investigating that abuse.
The screening, described in The Los Angeles Times as “extraordinary,” preceded a three-day meeting of the commission. That panel was created by Pope Francis, but he was reportedly not at the showing.
Last year, after the film played at the Venice Film Festival, Deadline.com quoted Mark Ruffalo, who plays one of the Boston Globe journalists, as saying that he and the rest of the “Spotlight” team were “hoping that the pope and the Vatican use this very, very sober and judicious story to begin to heal the wounds that the church also received.”
Vatican Radio commented on the film at the time, calling it “honest” and “compelling,” and praising the director, Tom McCarthy, for avoiding scandal-mongering. The outlet also noted that the church had nothing to fear from the film.
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