GREENVILLE (NC)
Reflector
April 3, 2019
By Terry Mattingly
At the end of the movie “Spotlight,” the screen went black before a message appeared noting that in 2002 alone, The Boston Globe’s investigative reporting team published nearly 600 stories about sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.
The next screen noted, “249 priests and brothers were publicly accused of sexual abuse within the Boston Archdiocese.”
But there was more. The first time Sister Veronica Openibo of Nigeria saw this film — which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2016 — she was stunned to see four screens packed with the names of 223 American dioceses and nations in which major abuse scandals had been uncovered.
“Tears of sorrow flowed,” she said, speaking at the Vatican’s global summit on clergy sexual abuse. “How could the clerical church have kept silent, covering these atrocities? The silence, the carrying of the secrets in the hearts of the perpetrators, the length of the abuses and the constant transfers of perpetrators are unimaginable.”
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