Mark Ruffalo has joined survivors of paedophile priests in a protest outside downtown LA’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, hours before he is due to attend the Academy Awards.
Ruffalo, who is nominated in the best supporting actor category for his performance in Spotlight, joined members of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) to call for the names of priests who had been convicted of abusing minors to be made public.
Spotlight follows a 2002 investigation by reporters from the Boston that uncovered the widespread sexual abuse of children by scores of the district’s clergy. Ruffalo plays Mike Rezendes, a veteran on the Globe’s investigative journalism team, which the film is named after.
The film details the cover-up of sexual abuse cases by Boston’s then archbishop Cardinal Bernard Francis Law. In 2013 SNAP accused the Catholic Church in LA of a similar cover-up and demanded that Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of the LA archdiocese in the 1980s, reveal the names of all priests who had been relocated after an incident of abuse. It’s one of a series of protests taking place across the US. “In LA and nine other US cities, SNAP urged bishops to disclose and post on church websites the names, photos, whereabouts and work histories of all predator priests,” said SNAP’s national director David Clohessy.
Ruffalo, along with Spotlight’s director and the film’s co-writer, Josh Singer, joined a small group of SNAP protestors outside the church. They held up banners showing childhood pictures of some of the victims of sexual abuse and chanted: “Protect the children. Expose the truth.”
