Phil Saviano, key clergy sex abuse whistleblower, dies at 69

BOSTON – Phil Saviano, a spiritual sexual abuse survivor and whistleblower who played a pivotal role in exposing decades of predatory attacks by Roman Catholic priests in the United States, has died. He was 69.

Saviano’s story was featured in the 2015 Oscar-winning Spotlight film about The Boston Globe’s investigation into how numerous priests molested and got away with children because church leaders covered it up. He died Sunday after a battle with gallbladder cancer, said brother and carer Jim Saviano.

In late October, Phil Saviano announced on his Facebook page that he would start hospice care at his brother’s house in Douglas, Massachusetts, where he died.

“Things have been tricky in the last few weeks,” he wrote, urging his followers to “listen to Judy Collins sing ‘Bird On A Wire’ and think of me.”

Saviano played a pivotal role in clearing up the scandal that led to the resignation of the Boston Cardinal Bernard Act and ecclesiastical settlements with hundreds of victims. The 2002 Globe series earned him the 2003 Pulitzer Public Service Award, and Spotlight won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Actor Neal Huff played in the film Saviano.

“My gift to the world was not to be afraid to raise my voice,” Saviano said in a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press in mid-November.

Born June 23, 1952, Saviano remembered going to confession as a young boy at St. Denis Church in tiny East Douglas, Massachusetts in the 1960s and whispering his transgressions through a screen to Rev. David Holley. The priest violated this sacred trust and forced the 11-year-old to engage in sexual acts. Holley died in a New Mexico prison in 2008 while serving a 275-year sentence for molesting eight boys.

“When we were children, the priests never did anything wrong. They didn’t question them, just like the police, ”Brother Jim Saviano told the AP. “There were many barriers that institutions and generational thinking put in his way on purpose and in other ways. That didn’t stop him. It’s a certain kind of courage that was unique. “

A self-proclaimed “recovering Catholic,” Saviano founded the New England Chapter of the Priestly Abused Survivors Network, or SNAP, an organization that works to bring to light specific allegations of clergy sexual abuse.

His faith in the Church was shaken, and Saviano relied instead on politicians and prosecutors to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“We trust lawmakers and prosecutors to solve this problem,” he told reporters in 2002.

“Phil was a key source in the Spotlight team’s coverage of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse cover-up, and provided other critical sources, research materials and the names of several accused priests,” said Mike Rezendes, a member of the Globe team at the den Brought scandal to light and a recent AP investigator reporter.

“He also shared his own heartbreaking story of abuse and filled us with the iron determination we needed to break this horrific story,” said Rezendes. “During our reporting and for the past 20 years, I’ve got to know Phil well and I’ve never met anyone who is so brave, compassionate, or so accomplished.”

Saviano studied zoology and communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Boston University and began working in hospital public relations. He later moved to entertainment industry advertising and concert promotion, working closely with Collins, a lifelong friend and confidante, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme and other artists.

He became seriously ill with AIDS in 1991 and went public with his child abuse the following year and was one of the first survivors to come forward.

“Father Holley forced me and two of my friends to have repeated sexual contact with him,” Saviano said in an interview with the Globe – the first of many that led not only to an indictment against the disgraced cleric, but too far Widespread prosecutions of others would lead to the enormity of the scandal became evident.

In the early 2000s, Saviano spent 10 hours a day on the phone with victims and journalists. He criticized the reluctance of the Vatican to deal decisively with the consequences of the scandal. When Pope Benedict XVI. In 2008, while visiting US bishops suggesting they had misappropriated the Church’s response, Saviano questioned the Pope’s decision to follow up his remarks with masses in New York and Washington.

“If he was really serious, this fair wouldn’t be held in New York. It would take place here in Boston, “he said.

In 2009, he suffered from kidney failure and was unable to find a mate among family or friends and found a donor after SNAP disseminated the news in a nationwide email to 8,000 clergymen who had survived sexual abuse .

The abuse exposed through Saviano’s work prompted Cardinal Law, the most senior churchman in Boston, to resign. Globe coverage showed that Law was aware of the priesthood child molesters but was hiding their crimes and unable to stop them, transferring them from one ward to another without alerting their parents or the police.

When the Archbishop died in Rome in 2017, Saviano asked bluntly: “How will he explain this when he faces his Creator?”

In 2019 at the Vatican, Saviano said at an abuse prevention summit convened by Pope Francis that he had asked organizers of the summit to release the names of abusive priests around the world along with their case files.

“Do it to usher in 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 prevent these creeps from molesting any more children, “he said.

Although much of his life was tough, Saviano enjoyed traveling and developed a soft spot for indigenous art. In 1999 he started an e-commerce website, Viva Oaxaca Folk Art, which showcases handcrafted decorations that he bought while traveling to southern Mexico and resold to collectors in the United States

He is survived by three brothers, Jim Saviano of Douglas; John Saviano of Douglas; and Victor Saviano of Boston; two nieces; and two nephews. The funeral provisions were incomplete.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/phil-saviano-key-clergy-sex-abuse-whistleblower-dies-69-n1284858