Phil Saviano who exposed decades of predatory sexual assaults by pedophile Catholic priests in their parish has passed away due to complications caused by gallbladder cancer.
Saviano who was himself a victim of sexual abuse played a very important role as a whistleblower and figured prominently in the 2015 Oscar-winning film Spotlight, about the Boston Globe investigation that exposed a number of priests who molested children and got away with it because the powerful and influential church leaders covered it up.
As more information on Catholic Church coverup of the rampant sexual abuse carried out by priests started to emerge, it was evident that Cardinal Law was fully aware of child molesters but instead covered up their crimes to protect the Church and he did not report them to authorities.
Instead, Law just transferred them from parish to parish without alerting parents or police that led to more children being molested.
When Cardinal Law died in the comfort of the Vatican in 2017, Saviano said, “How is he going to explain this when he comes face to face with his maker?”
Eventually, Cardinal Bernard Law’s role in the coverup was exposed on how he protected pedophile Catholic priests and that led to the resignation of a very powerful individual who went to great lengths to keep this matter in the dark.
The Church was so protective of its priests and its reputation, it chose to pay settlements in hundreds of millions of dollars to hundreds of victims but it is yet to take concrete measures against many priests.
The Boston Globe investigation of the 2002 series earned the newspaper Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003 and the movie Spotlight won Oscars for best picture and best original screenplay.
Mike Rezendes, a member of the Globe team that investigated the scandal said, “Phil was an essential source during the Spotlight team’s reporting on the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, providing other critical sources, research materials and the names of several accused priests.
“He also shared his own heartbreaking story of abuse, imbuing us with the iron determination we needed to break this horrific story. During our reporting, and over the last 20 years, I got to know Phil well and have never met anyone as brave, as compassionate or as savvy.”
Saviano was an 11-year-old in the early 1960s when his priest, David Holley, forced him to perform sex acts. Later, Holley died in a New Mexico prison in 2008, while serving a 275-year sentence for molesting eight boys.
“When we were kids, the priests never did anything wrong. You didn’t question them, same as the police,” Jim Saviano said. “There were many barriers put in [Phil’s] way intentionally and otherwise by institutions and generational thinking. That didn’t stop him. That’s a certain kind of bravery that was unique.”
Saviano called himself a “recovering Catholic” and established the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those abused by Priests, or Snap, an organization working to bring allegations to light.
He became an outspoken critic of the Vatican and helped the investigation immensely as he personally contacted many victims of Catholic clergy sexual abuse. He was very angry towards the Vatican’s reluctance to deal decisively and objectively even after Pope Benedict XVI hinted that US bishops had mishandled the Church’s response during his visit to the US, Saviano questioned the pontiff’s decision to hold masses in New York and Washington.
In 2019, at the Vatican for an abuse prevention summit called convened by Pope Francis, Saviano called for the release the names of abusive priests around the world along with their case files.
“Do it to launch a new era of transparency. Do it to break the code of silence. Do it out of respect for the victims of these men, and do it to help prevent these creeps from abusing any more children,” he said.
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