Decades long of child abuse scandals by Catholic priests are finally revealed on screen in the 2016 Oscar-winning Best Picture of the Year, Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy. It takes a riveting glimpse into the allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church.

The investigative journalists from the Boston Globe dig into the mysteries behind the decades of  covered up abuse scandals towards children by priests in the Catholic Church. There are various intense discoveries in the movie, such as Sacha Pfeiffer, one of the journalists working on the case, interviewing a priest involved in the scandal. The movie takes place in Boston where Catholicism is a way of life and priests are looked to as mentors. “When a priest pays attention to you it’s a big deal,” Phil Saviano one of the victims played in the film says during an interrogation with the journalists.  

The movie takes a realistic approach to the struggles a journalist endures from the slamming of phones to the long hours spent researching. Spotlight displays an anti-glamorous method in which the story is carried out. This is refreshing due to the commonality of sugar-coating real life occupations and circumstances in Hollywood movies. The premise of the movie gives viewers the sensation that this “psychiatric phenomenon” actually occurred rather than a fictional story.

The movie reveals disturbing facts about the case such as the paying off  the victims $20,000 and letting them talk with a bishop in order to discreetly hide the cases from courts and keep it under the table. Michael Rezendes, played by Mark Ruffalo, a Spotlight reporter, discovers that there were well over 800 abuse cases in Boston alone and many more that weren’t yet revealed. Also unveiled by the Spotlight reporters is that over 6% of priests across the country have had a misconduct with a minor. The film does an explicit job of unveiling the sins of the fathers.

The movie incorporates moral beliefs in it saying, “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one”. Through this the screenwriters infer that the entire city is somehow connected to the abuse.  Over the course of the two hour film you get a deeper look into one of the oldest and most trusted institutions in the world and the flaws that coincide with it. The effort in the movie and in real life to reveal the fact that Cardinal Law, the former Archbishop of Boston, knew about the molestation cases yet continued to keep the priests in the parish is depicted realistically throughout the film.

Between the real life events, stories, and people involved Spotlight tells the story of one of the biggest cover up scandals in the history of the Catholic Church in a realistic and eerie manner. As students in a Catholic high school, this movie is eye-opening due to the revelation that all human made institutions are slightly corrupt and flawed. This blemish on the Catholic Church’s history brings to mind that no corporation is too big to be held accountable for their mistakes, this includes the perceived perfect Catholic church. Spotlight does a phenomenal job of illustrating the faults and horror’s involved in this scandal along with incorporating the communal effect such an event has on society.