Marty Baron, editor of the Boston Globe, when the newspaper exposed the Catholic hierarchy’s systematic cover-up of child sexual abuse by clergy, retired from journalism in late February. Catholics are indebted to him. He told us the truth.

Mr. Baron spent his final years at the Washington Post after serving for half a century for several of the country’s leading newspapers, including the Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times. But he is best remembered for opening the clergymen’s sexual abuse investigation that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, journalism’s highest honor. An outsider in ecclesiastical Boston who was not tied to kinship and cultural ties that handicapped others, he gave the go-ahead for an expensive and difficult investigation.

As an outsider in ecclesiastical Boston, with no family or cultural ties, Mr. Baron gave the go-ahead for an expensive and difficult investigation.

In a series of articles published in the winter of 2002, The Boston Globe revealed the extent of clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston and the legal efforts church leaders went to to cover it up. The investigation shook the church. The scandal that followed led to the departure of tens of thousands of Catholics, the closure of parishes, diocesan bankruptcy and a reorganization of the relationship between Catholics and ecclesiastical authority.

But the impact of the Spotlight team’s series extends far beyond Catholicism. It enabled exposures of sexual abuse in institutions as diverse as the Boy Scouts of America, Penn State Football Program, and the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team. All of this – as well as the #MeToo movement – came from the room to tell the truth about sexual abuse that Mr Baron tore up.

The Globe’s coverage was epoch-making and fundamentally reorganized the relationship between American Catholics and their church, said James McCartin, associate professor of theology at Fordham University and a historian of American Catholicism. The Spotlight series stands alongside the Spanish conquest, 19th century immigration and the Second Vatican Council as a central event in the 400-year history of Catholics in North America, he said. The coverage of the Boston Globe is groundbreaking, said McCartin, not only for the US, but worldwide. “I think this is the history of the Church so far in the 21st century,” he said.

In a series of articles published beginning in 2002, The Boston Globe revealed the extent of clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston and the legal efforts church leaders went to to cover it up.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing, an example of this magnitude, that changes the shape of a religion,” said Kathleen Holscher, associate professor and director of the Religious Studies program at the University of New Mexico who has studied clerical sexual abuse in the Navajo Nation. The meticulous and exhaustive journalism Mr Baron initiated forced Catholics to face corruption in the church hierarchy in ways that previous reporting did not, Ms. Holscher said. “Not only do I want to put too much emphasis on Spotlight, but there is life in a world before and after the sexual abuse crisis,” she noted. “After 2002 you live in a world in which you have to reckon with a broken church.”

The coverage of sexual abuse by clergymen was not new. Newspapers across the country, including Catholic publications (most notably the National Catholic Reporter), had written about isolated cases for years. But the Spotlight series revealed the pattern of obfuscation and secrecy of the hierarchy that placed the institution’s reputation above child safety. Using the lengthy, methodical, and tenacious means of investigative journalism, the Globe reporters followed a story the scope of which changed the understanding of the crimes. Mr. Baron was willing to spend money on the salaries of a full-time investigation team and to fight in court for the release of sealed settlement records and correspondence. Obtaining these documents and tracking down others exposed a systematic conspiracy of cover-up and lies.

It is this surrender to the truth, even to the terrible, earth-shattering truth that Catholics should be grateful for.

“We screamed for decades and no one listened,” said David Clohessy, national director of the survivors’ network of the priestly abused. “Baron and his team were not content to accept the same denial and minimization and blame that bishops had given for years.” Clohessy credits the series for protecting tens of thousands of children by enforcing social reckoning for child sexual abuse. “It is always tempting to ignore and minimize evil, and Baron’s work made that impossible,” said Clohessy. Journalism did something else too, said Clohessy. “It has proven that no lies live forever.”

It is this surrender to the truth, even to the terrible, earth-shattering truth that Catholics should be grateful for.

“It was a very impressive demonstration of what a free press can do,” said Tom Roberts, former editor of the National Catholic Reporter, who had covered cases of clergy sexual abuse for decades. “It’s a great journalistic story.”

According to Sheila Coronel, director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, Mr. Baron’s work has broken new ground. “A lot of investigations have always involved governments or large corporations,” said Coronel. “This is a milestone: the investigation of an influential, global, secret institution. Spotlight looked at the Catholic Church and its knowledge. I think it takes someone from outside the family to say that something is wrong here. ”

Mr. Baron is a Jew. Catholic history is not its history. But his courage – his ability to reject intimidation by lawyers, partisans, or cardinals (or owners who question slow, expensive journalism) – has a sacramental quality. There is a search and a revelation, clarity against fog, belief in the power of facts. In the miserable light of truth we can see – and try to fix it.

Tom Roberts compares this type of journalism to the Ignatian exams, which greet desolation as a kind of message. “We know that every human individual or institution will go through times of great difficulty,” he said. “We do not benefit from such difficulties and difficult times if we do not meet and deal with them and, in our case, use the spirituality that leads us to help us out of these things.”

Mr. Baron led the team that forced us to see. Twenty years later we are still fighting.

Sheila Coronel gave an assessment of the retired journalist that sounded like a prayer: “He is an example of journalistic greatness. May there be more like him.

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