There are terrible things that have happened that few people have been held responsible for. 911, Wall Street frauds and the Priest pedophilia epidemic. At least there is a movie that just got a lot of attention at the Academy Awards that showed everyone the sadness of the cover ups in an environment where you were taught there was just honesty, goodness and protection. It turns out they never protected the children, they protected themselves. The church manipulated the system so that the bad Priests would not have to face charges. The movie shows that it is a systemic problem that came from the cardinals down to the parish Priests.

The movie called Spotlight was nominated for 6 Oscars and won Best picture and best screenplay. It is worth seeing again. The writer, a simple guy from New Jersey, Tom McCarthy was astonished at all the recognition the movie received. People saw the movie because they were astonished about the betrayal of the Catholic Church. The movie gained popularity even though there isn’t even one scene of violence or a gun fight of sorts yet everyone was frozen in compelling interest. There are no love scenes or fictional monsters. The Priests are the monsters. The Boston Priests molested children over the past 30 years. The church found out about it and did nothing.

It is a true story about how the reporters at the Boston Globe uncovered the scandal. They did their own boots on the ground research tracking the careers of pedophile Priests just moving around in the system and never being prosecuted for their pedophilia. The Boston Globe’s investigation in 2001 won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize.  The movie suggests that plenty of people knew what horrors were going on but did nothing. What did they know and why did it take so long before they did something to stop the cycle of shame. Much of the work the reporters did was also featured in the HBO series called The Wild.

It is great when a social issue gets global recognition through an entertainment medium as the movies and it then considered to be so good that it also wins Oscars.  Since no one reads much anymore newspapers but all strive for that movie room in their homes with the larger the TV the better, we need more reporters to become screenwriters to get their message across and educate us all about the social issues of the day even if they have to make movies about them.