Nearly 30 years later, suffering from AIDS and believing he would soon die, he decided to go public about the abuse and disclosed his experience to The Boston Globe. As it happened, Mr. Saviano lived, and he went on to play a pivotal role in bringing to light the widespread pedophile priest scandal coursing through the Roman Catholic Church.

He provided key information and guidance for a series of articles by The Globe’s Spotlight team, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. And his role was dramatized in the Academy Award-winning 2015 movie “Spotlight,” which showed how the church had hidden its crimes and how The Globe had uncovered them.

Jim Saviano said that his brother had been in failing health for some time. He underwent heart bypass surgery this year, then had a stroke and was diagnosed with aggressive gall bladder cancer.

A relentless and determined activist, Phil Saviano documented the actions of dozens of pedophile priests in the Boston area and coaxed other survivors to go public with their stories. He helped educate the Spotlight team about how priests had groomed their victims for eventual seduction and how the church had knowingly shuttled rogue priests to different parishes, where they often went on to abuse other children.

“Think of the enormity of what the church had been hiding for so long,” Walter V. Robinson, the former editor of the Spotlight team, said in an interview for this obituary in September. “That was a lot of combustible material, and it was Phil more than anyone else who set it ablaze.”