Saviano's story figured prominently in the 2015 Oscar-winning film Spotlight, about the Boston Globe investigation that revealed how scores of priests molested children and got away with it because church leaders covered it up.

He died on Sunday after a battle with gallbladder cancer, said his brother and caregiver, Jim Saviano. In late October, Phil Saviano announced that he was starting hospice care.

"Things have been dicey the last few weeks," he wrote, asking followers to "give a listen to Judy Collins singing Bird On A Wire and think of me".

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The movie also won best original screenplay.

"This film gave a voice to survivors, and this Oscar amplifies that voice, which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican," said producer Michael Sugar.

"Pope Francis: it's time to protect the children and restore the faith," added Sugar.

Matt Carroll, one of the reporters of The Boston Globe, expressed hope that the movie will continue "to help victims for a long time to come."

"Spotlight" had been praised as the most influential and critically acclaimed movie about journalism since "All The President's Men" in 1976.

The movie dramatized the 2001-2002 The Boston Globe investigation that spurred some abuse survivors to come forward for the first time.

In 2001, Marty Baron, editor The Boston Globe, assigned a team of journalists to investigate allegations against John Geoghan, an unfrocked priest accused of molesting more than 80 boys.

Led by editor Walter "Robby" Robinson, reporters Michael Rezendes, Matt Carroll, and Sacha Pfeiffer interviewed victims and tried to unseal sensitive documents.

The reporters made it their mission to provide proof of a cover-up of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

In October 2015, Vatican Radio praised "Spotlight" for demonstrating "the inexhaustible and uncontainable force of the truth."

Luca Pellegrini, an art and culture commentator for Vatican Radio, wrote that the movie director "never gives in to personal interpretation or falls into the trap of scandal." He also hailed the "extraordinary performances" by actors Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton.

Pellegrini wrote that the Catholic Church should not be wary of a film about its past failures.

Sources

CNN
Crux
The Hollywood Reporter
The Guardian
Reuters
Image: AP/NPR

Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, headed the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, which St John Paul II put in charge of overseeing cases of clerical sex abuse against minors in 2001.

Speaking to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta rejected past media charges against Cardinal Ratzinger.

Archishop Sciciluna is the head of a board within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that deals with appeals filed by clergy accused of abuse.

Before he was named an auxiliary bishop in Malta in 2012, Archbishop Scicluna spent 10 years as promoter of justice at the doctrinal congregation, handling accusations of clerical sex abuse.

Archbishop Scicluna said it is "unfounded and unjust" for some media to have asserted that Cardinal Ratzinger covered up abuse when he was head of the doctrinal congregation.

Abuse cases were being handled "on the level of the local dioceses", the archbishop said.

"In the 1960s and 1970s, many bishops were basing their decisions on the woefully inadequate theory that these crimes were caused by surrounding conditions.

"And that's why, instead of reporting the guilty, they moved them from parish to parish. But they remained predators wherever" they were.

After 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger would hold a special meeting every Friday with his staff, Archbishop Scicluna said, to study the cases before them and to launch a trial.

"We all saw his suffering," which often left him absolutely speechless during the meetings, the archbishop said.

He said the future pope was "indignant as well as deeply affected" by the abuse scandal.

Cardinal Ratzinger condemning it in his well-known Way of the Cross meditation in 2005 when he said, "How much filth there is in the Church."

In a press conference on the flight back from Mexico, Pope Francis said Benedict XVI deserves applause for his handling of the sex-abuse crisis, particularly in the time before his election to the papacy.

"He was the brave one who helped so many open this door," Francis said.

Archbishop Sciciluna said every bishop and cardinal should see the film Spotlight which depicts the investigative journalism that exposed the abuse scandal in Boston archdiocese.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Catholic Culture
• Image: Life on Dover Beach

It's the story about the newspaper investigation that uncovered widespread child abuse within the Catholic Church opens in New Zealand on Thursday.

Spotlight is the name of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team of journalists from the Boston Globe that broke the story of child abuse being carried out, and systematically covered up, by the Catholic Church. Continue reading

The first trailer for the drama "Spotlight", directed and co-written by Tom McCarthy, has been released.

The movie, distributed by Open Road Films, tells the true story behind the Boston Globe's investigation into child abuse in the Catholic Church.

The group of journalists won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003 after uncovering the Boston archdiocese's widespread cover-up of sexual abuse.

"West Wing" scribe Josh Singer co-wrote the film, which has already generated plenty of awards buzz.

The Globe's reporting eventually led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, who had hidden years of abuse by other priests, and yielded other revelations of molestation and cover-ups around the world.

Michael Keaton stars alongside Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber and Stanley Tucci.

Billy Crudup plays a church representative trying to shut the investigation down.

"We've got two stories here," says Keaton as Walter "Robby" Robinson, the editor of the Globe's Spotlight investigations team.

"A story about degenerate clergy and a story about a bunch of lawyers turning child abuse into a cottage industry. Which story do you want us to write? Because we're writing one of them."

"Spotlight" will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, and will also screen at the Toronto Film Festival.

It will be released in cinemas in the US in November.

Sources

• Variety
• The Guardian
• Image: The Guardian