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Catholics owe Marty Baron a debt of gratitude. He told us the truth about the clerical sex abuse crisis.

Marty Baron Clerical Abuse

Title: Catholics owe Marty Baron a debt of gratitude. He told us the truth about the clerical sex abuse crisis.
Author: Eileen Markey
Publisher: America Magazine
Date: 26MAR2021

Marty Baron, editor of The Boston Globe when the newspaper exposed the Catholic hierarchy’s systemic coverup of sexual abuse of children by clergy, retired from journalism at the end of February. Catholics owe him a debt of gratitude. He told us the truth.

Mr. Baron spent his final working years at The Washington Post after a half-century career in which he served at several of the nation’s premier newspapers, including the Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. But he will be best remembered for launching the Globe’s clergy sex abuse investigation, which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, journalism’s highest honor. An outsider in parochial Boston not beholden to ties of kin and culture that hobbled others, he greenlighted an expensive and difficult investigation.

In a series of articles published beginning in the winter of 2002, The Boston Globe revealed the breadth of clergy sex abuse in the Boston archdiocese and the legal lengths to which church leaders went to cover it up. The investigation shook the church. The ensuing scandal led to the departure of tens of thousands of Catholics, parish closings, diocesan bankruptcies and a reordering of Catholics’ relationship with ecclesial authority.
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