I saw the movie Spotlight recently and was deeply moved by its powerful acting and authentic storytelling: how a courageous team of reporters and editors at the Boston Globe exposed the Catholic Church's coverup of widespread pedophilia among its priests. Highly recommended! The following review by Indiana poet laureate Norbert Krapf, author of Catholic Boy Blues, expresses the profound effect of this film on the survivors of priestly abuse, and their loved ones. Reblogging with his permission....

SPOTLIGHT

A Review by Norbert Krapf

Finally, despite multiple medical procedures and family obligations, I got to see the impressive, powerful, and moving film “Spotlight.” The acting is excellent, so is the script and every other aspect of it, but what’s most impressive is the uncompromising truth-telling.

If you are a survivor, have a sibling or relative or friend who is a survivor, you must see this film. If you can’t believe that the Church stonewalled it and in effect betrayed survivors and its own ideals and moral, ethical, and religious principles all over again, you must see this film. I was reminded, over and over, what an ugly betrayal the cover-up was and still is. I was reminded of how I felt the sting, the outrage, the hurt, the filthy putdown of what it felt like to have the church hierarchy negate me and my fellow survivors over and over in parish and diocese and archdiocese in city after city through its denials and secret “deals.”

My fellow survivors, if you go to see this powerful and uncompromising film, do not go by yourself. I sobbed uncontrollably, repeatedly. Go with someone who cares for you, loves you, someone you love, because it will be torture to see it by yourself. Go with someone who supports you. In the company of someone who understands what you went through back then and had to go through all over again because of this later betrayal, which complicated your early pain exponentially, you will better be able to appreciate what a great service the whole team that put this film together has given us all.

This is art that serves humanity. This is truth that had to out. If we cannot face the truth, we cannot help our children. This film helps us face the truth, as hard as that may be. There is still much work to be done on this. I am eternally grateful to anyone who had anything to do with making and bringing this film out for us all to experience. This film is about the betrayal by the Catholic Church of its young victim-survivors, but child abuse and its cover-up are NOT limited to the Catholic Church, and are not limited to the United States. They are world-wide problems. I say BRAVO! to the “Spotlight” team.

May my “Catholic Boy Blues” collection of poems and the prose memoir “Shrinking the Monster” forthcoming from In Extenso Press, an imprint of ACTA Publications of Chicago, also the new publisher of the poetry collection, play their small part in speaking out against child abuse and the harm it does to us, our children, our grandchildren, and our descendants. As a survivor, I give thanks for “Spotlight” and I encourage you to see it. I hope Pope Francis has seen it, because it should help him take action; it must have made this good-hearted Pope cry.