Went to see #SpotlightMovie this evening, a powerful and emotive dramatisation of the story of the Boston Globe’s uncovering of the cover up of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Boston. As in Ireland and elsewhere the media have been at the forefront of helping survivors reveal their experiences, their disclosures to Church authorities and the cover up by those authorities that facilitated so much more sexual abuse leaving a heavy price to be paid by many more children.
#SpotlightMovie depicts so well the efforts the Catholic hierarchy in Boston went to to fight the exposition of the truth about their despicable actions being uncovered. The same had been happening here in Ireland with Catholic Church authorities behaving in a most cowardly, deceitful and self-serving way to play down their own roles in similar cover ups and present each revelation as an isolated incident all the time knowing they had many files on many priests which would tell a different and devastating story.
In many US cities, here in Ireland and many other countries around the world inquiries of state eventually followed survivor stories and media revelations and every such inquiry has found that Catholic Church authorities engaged in many tactics to wilfully and systematically cover up the sexual abuse of children by its priests for decades with heinous consequences for many more children. The fact that the truth of that has had to be dragged out of each Diocese that has been investigated only serves to add insult to injury.
The position to this very day at that ‘great listening post’ the Vatican is that nobody there knew any of this was going on and played no part in any cover up – not in the slightest bit credible. Unfortunately that doesn’t stop some people from continuing to line up to lend credibility to every self-serving window dressing piece of nonsense rolled out at the Vatican to help prop up their claims of ignorance. No greater fools than those so willing.
Well done to Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup on a great movie.
31st January 2016
Dear Andrew, Thank you so much for coming forward with your story. You are beyond brave. Currently I am attempting to track Father Ivan Payne's movements outside of Ireland. When he studied Cannon Law at St. Paul's in Ottawa he helped with the Youth Group in Gatineau Quebec - information about his movements in Canada is limited but is on Sylvia's list.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theinquiry.ca/wordpress/accused/charged/payne-father-ivan-payne/
Do you know where he studied before he was ordained? Was it in Ottawa? Or do you know of any other times he visited Canada?
Gatineau Quebec, Canada was an Irish community at that time which was just across the river from Ottawa where he studied.
Thanks for all you have done.