If you have seen the movie “Spotlight” — especially if you are a journalist — you know that it’s one of the two or three best films ever made about the picky, high-stakes work involved in investigative journalism.
But there was another layer to this film that I found especially powerful.
Obviously, the subject of clergy sexual abuse is painful and divisive. Every now and then, I still hear from angry readers who believe this whole hellish scandal — which began creeping into headlines in 1984 with the Gilbert Gauthe case in Louisiana — was a media plot against the Church of Rome. It’s important to note that there were conservative Catholics who dug down to the roots of this scandal (see the scathing book “Sacrilege” by Leon Podles), along with the efforts of many Catholic liberals and many ex-Catholics.
The scandal affected many people in different ways. The movie “Spotlight” stressed how the shock and anger unleashed by this scandal affected the faith of some of the Boston Globe journalists. Then there were the shattered victims. It’s amazing that any of them emerged with their faith intact. Some did. Many did not.
This brings me to some of the major-media obituaries for Phil Saviano, a victim who became one of the most important activists who tirelessly worked for justice. Saviano served as a consultant for the “Spotlight” screenwriters and his character appeared in the movie, played by actor Neal Huff.
As I read the coverage, I kept wondering: Would anyone include information about Saviano’s faith? Did he leave Catholicism? Did he convert to another faith?
As you would expect, the Globe obituary is long and detailed. I thought this detail was exceptionally powerful:
When the advent of protease inhibitors to treat HIV/AIDS prolonged Mr. Saviano’s life, he kept speaking out until the end through a series of health issues. Not least among them was a crisis on that night in 2016 when “Spotlight,” the movie based on the Globe’s clergy sex abuse coverage, won the Academy Award for best picture.
In Los Angeles for the ceremony, Mr. Saviano accidently injured himself while administering medication in a shot to his abdomen. Bleeding internally, he went to a hospital, where a doctor thought his life was ebbing away.
“The doctor said, ‘I have to check you in,’ and Phil said, ‘I have to go to this show. We have to show that a survivor is there, and I’m going to be there one way or another,’ " recalled the singer Judy Collins, a longtime friend who was performing elsewhere in Los Angeles that night.
When the best picture was announced, Mr. Saviano joined the film’s director, producers, actors, and Globe reporter Michael Rezendes on stage — more than 50 years after those frightening childhood encounters he had endured in the St. Denis Church basement.
The Globe also noted that Saviano had addressed the faith question openly, while describing how he was groomed for abuse and then attacked.
“I lost my faith before I’d even gone through puberty. For over a year, I struggled with a priest who cornered me every chance he got,” Mr. Saviano wrote in remarks he prepared for a searing, healing speech he delivered in Boston in 2002 at the first national convention of the Voice of the Faithful.
“There are things that I remember even today — the coolness of the dark church basement; the smell of his sickly, sweet cologne; the beads of sweat on his forehead; the force of his hands around my skinny wrist,” he said. “What I remember the most, however, is the confusion,” Mr. Saviano added. “I worried greatly that year, about sin and about forgiveness. How could I disobey God’s emissary on earth?”
Then there is this simple detail — about his family and perhaps the victim’s own faith — that will be crucial for many Catholic readers:
In addition to his brother Jim, Mr. Saviano leaves his brothers John of Douglas and Victor of Dorchester. A funeral Mass will be said for Mr. Saviano but plans were not immediately available.
The Washington Post obit also included information about the ultimate spiritual consequences of this ordeal, focusing on a direct quotes from Saviano in previous news coverage.
There was this passage that repeated familiar themes drawn from the movie and earlier Saviano speeches and news-media interviews:
“He was grooming us,” Mr. Saviano told the Daily Mail in 2015. “The priest figures out ways to get closer to either the child or the parents. That gives him an opportunity to know what is going on in our family and in school. I felt pretty lucky that this guy was taking an interest in me. For us, he was God’s representative on earth, who could perform magic like turning wine into the blood of Christ and forgiving sins.” …
“How do you say no to God?” Mr. Saviano’s character says in “Spotlight.”
Then there was this blunt exchange, including a paraphrase that will leave many readers wondering about the precise wording of the actual Saviano quote. Was God on trial in this case (the theological term is theodicy), as well as the abuser priest?
Mr. Saviano’s experiences with the church caused him to lose all religious faith, and he considered himself an agnostic.
“I find myself envious sometimes of people who do have a strong faith,” he said in 2002. “And I don’t know what that’s like. There are days when I can’t do this on my own.”
Clearly, it was possible for journalists to find information — from Saviano himself — that would allow them to include the faith element in this story, which is one of the most important religion-beat stories in recent decades.
However, the New York Times obit managed to avoid this element of the story (with the exception of one symbolic factual detail).
There was, of course, plenty of material — totally valid — about the details of case and of Saviano’s life as a child and as an adult. This passage was sickening, to say the least:
A relentless and determined activist, Phil Saviano documented the actions of dozens of pedophile priests in the Boston area and coaxed other survivors to go public with their stories. He helped educate the Spotlight team about how priests had groomed their victims for eventual seduction and how the church had knowingly shuttled rogue priests to different parishes, where they often went on to abuse other children. …
As a boy, Mr. Saviano attended St. Denis Church in Douglas, Mass., in the Diocese of Worcester, west of Boston. There, the Rev. David A. Holley ingratiated himself with Phil and other boys with jokes and card tricks.
At one point, the priest used a deck of cards with pornographic images. He began using cards with increasingly graphic pictures and one day exposed himself to the boys.
As for the religion angle, there was this one enigmatic reference:
Mr. Saviano planned his memorial service to be held at St. Denis, the same place where he had been abused. “He wanted to make a statement to the Vatican,” his brother Jim said. “He said, ‘I want them to understand that they haven’t knocked me down.’”
I am sure that there were behind-the-scenes discussions — among members of Saviano’s family and, perhaps, among Catholic officials — about the request for a funeral Mass, under these circumstances.
I will end with this question: Would it be appropriate for journalists to ask what this request did or didn’t say about the final status of Saviano’s view of the Catholic Church and his own faith?
Let me offer my own take on that tough question: If allowed to interview members of his family, I would note Saviano’s own words and then asked if they knew if his views had changed or evolved. I don’t think reporters should pry into the details of what church officials decided in this case.
FIRST IMAGE: Phil Saviano at the Oscars, as shown in an uncredited photo featured at the website of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.