Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015

The team huddles around a speakerphone as Sipe tells them fifty percent of clergy aren't celibate and that a 1985 Church report warning of a billion-dollar pedophile-priest liability was buried, then estimates the true number could be ninety priests in Boston.

Scene 66 of 143 · ≈ 2 min on screen · Act two

Sipe
Sacha
Mike
Rezendez
Robby
Matt

Act two

Begins 1:08 into a 2:19 film

The story so farBefore scene 66

The Boston Globe's Spotlight team pries open the Catholic Church's decades-long cover-up of child abuse — one sealed record, one silenced victim at a time.

Scenes 4–10
Robby's Spotlight team operates comfortably inside its own routine, prospecting a modest police-corruption story under a departing editor's cover.
Scenes 11–14
Baron's outsider question exposes what the paper has never done: investigate whether Cardinal Law knowingly protected an abusive priest.
Scenes 15–24
The team sets aside its own project and enters unfamiliar territory: survivor networks, a hostile plaintiff's lawyer, and a legal fight to unseal church records.
Scenes 25–65
The team pays the cost of the work — hearing survivor testimony, chasing MacLeish's stonewalling, and combing church directories for a hidden pattern of reassigned priests.
Just before
Scene 63
Over dinner, Garabedian tells Mike that friends of the Church sealed a criminal case's records, and needles him about being Portuguese in an Irish Catholic town where outsiders finally see what insiders ignore.
Scene 64
At the gala bar, Robby confronts Jim Sullivan about defending abusive priests, and Jim warns him he's talking about the Church, good people who've done a lot for the city.
Scene 65
Matt tells Robby and the team the Church used a slew of coded designations to shuffle abusive priests through parishes far more often than normal, and Mike gets Sipe on the phone.
Scene 66
This scene

66INT. GLOBE, SPOTLIGHT OFFICE - CONTINUOUS

The team is HUDDLED around a SPEAKERPHONE.

SIPE (ON SPEAKERPHONE)

I think if you want to understand

the crisis, you need to start with

the celibacy requirement. That was

my first major finding: only 50% of

the clergy are celibate.

They share a look. 50%? Can that be true?

SIPE (ON SPEAKERPHONE) (CONT’D)

Now, most of them are having sex

with other adults. But this creates

a culture of secrecy, that tolerates

and even protects pedophiles.

SACHA

So you believe the church is aware

of the extent of this ‘crisis?’

SIPE (ON SPEAKERPHONE)

Absolutely. After the first major

scandal in Louisiana, Tom Doyle, the

Secretary Canonist for the Papal

Nuncio, coauthored a report warning

pedophile priests were a billion-

dollar liability. That was in 1985.

MIKE

1985?

SIPE (ON SPEAKERPHONE)

That’s right.

MIKE

Who saw this document? Anyone in

the Catholic hierarchy?

SIPE (ON SPEAKERPHONE)

Sure. Doyle tried to introduce the

report at the National Conference of

Catholic Bishops. In fact, Cardinal

Law initially helped to fund the

report, but then he backed out and

they shelved it.

REZENDEZ

(to Sacha and Matt)

Are you kidding me?

ROBBY

Richard, Robby here. We think we

have thirteen priests in Boston that

fit this pattern, which would be a

very big story. Does that sound

right to you? In terms of scale?

SIPE (ON SPEAKERPHONE)