Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015

MacLeish's emailed list confirms forty-five priests, and Marty, realizing Law's outsized reaction to the Porter story means he already knew about others, pushes the team to focus on the institution rather than individual predators.

Scene 78 of 143 · ≈ 3 min on screen · Act two

Ben
Marty
Robby
Mike
Sacha
Matt

Act two

Begins 1:20 into a 2:19 film

The story so farBefore scene 78

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.
Scenes 66–76
The directory search and Sipe's estimate deliver what they set out for: confirmation that the abuse spans dozens, then eighty-seven, priests across Boston.
Just before
Scene 75
In his office, Robby calls Jim Sullivan and asks point blank if the number could really be ninety; Jim tells him to stop this before hanging up, and Robby learns MacLeish is stonewalling a meeting.
Scene 76
Robby and Sacha corner MacLeish in his lobby and threaten to write about lawyers profiting from abuse settlements unless he confirms the numbers; he admits he sent the Globe a list of twenty priests years ago that was buried.
Scene 77
Over hot dogs, Mike tells Sipe on the phone he still considers himself Catholic despite his estrangement from the institution; after the call drops, Ben arrives with pizza and Mike admits they have eighty-seven names, then presses Ben on whether Saviano's old warnings were ever followed up.
Scene 78
This scene

78INT. GLOBE, MARTY’S OFFICE - DAY

CLOSE ON an EMAILED LIST of Priests and victims.

BEN (O.C.)

This is unbelievable.

MARTY

When did you get this?

ROBBY

MacLeish emailed the list this

morning. He settled cases against

forty-five priests.

REVEAL Marty and Ben across the table from Robby and the rest of the Spotlight team. Marty pages through the printout.

MARTY

Where are we on Law? Anything that

shows he had knowledge of this?

BEN

We’re still working Garabedian. But

nothing concrete.

Marty considers this. Then he turns to Robby.

MARTY

I keep thinking about that

conversation we had the other night.

You said Law called down the power

of God when we reported on Porter.

BEN

That’s just Law being Law.

MARTY

Okay, but I checked the clips,

Porter wasn’t even in the Boston

Archdiocese. He was in Fall River.

So, why the extreme reaction?

ROBBY

(realizing)

Law had to know.

That’s why he had the reaction. He

knew there were others.

MARTY

I think that’s the bigger story.

The team reacts. Robby watches.

MIKE

Bigger than fifty priests?

MARTY

If it came from the top down, yes.

SACHA

But the numbers clearly indicate

senior clergy were involved.

MARTY

That’s all they do, indicate.

MIKE

You’re telling me we run a ROBBY story about fifty pedophile (stepping in)