Vatican Newspaper Has Come out in Support of Tom McCarthy’s Oscar-Winning Film, Spotlight

Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight took home Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but the acclaimed film didn’t just win over the Academy. In fact, Spotlight has gotten some recent praise from an unlikely source—the Vatican.

McCarthy’s film recounts the 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church and the newspaper’s uncovering of long-time systematic cover-ups and corruption. In response to the Oscar results, L’Osservatore Romano, a Vatican newspaper, praised the film and the people involved. The Catholic publication said Tom McCarthy’s film “has the courage to denounce cases which must be condemned without any hesitation. And it does so in detail, on the basis of a documentation substantially serious and credible.”

One of the newspaper’s editorials disputes the notion that Spotlight conveys any Anti-Catholic sentiment. The piece claims that the film instead exposes the atrocities committed by some in the church and draws attention to the issue of sex abuse.

Editor and author of the article, Lucetta Scaraffia’s only qualm with the Oscar-winning film is that it failed to show Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts in stopping pedophelia within the church, but acknowledges that “one film cannot tell all.”

In February, Spotlight was featured at a Vatican panel on clergy sex abuse, and many within the church hope that the film will help to enact some positive change and restore the faith.

Spotlight won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Its lead actors, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, were also nominated for their roles as Globe journalists.