In recognizing the Boston Globe for its coverage of the child-sexual-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, and Harvard’s Samantha Power for her reporting on genocide and American foreign policy, the Pulitzer Prize board did more than simply honor the work of the recipients. It also shone a light on serious, unresolved problems.

The Globe and Power, the author of " A Problem from Hell " : America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books, 2002), are among three local Pulitzer winners announced on Monday. The third is the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, which won the award in breaking-news reporting for its coverage of the drowning of four boys in the Merrimack River last December.

The Globe won the public-service award, its first Pulitzer in that category since 1975, when it was honored for " its massive and balanced coverage of the Boston school desegregation crisis. " Starting in January 2002, the paper began publishing a string of more than 900 stories showing that Bernard Cardinal Law was not only aware of pedophile priests in the Boston archdiocese, but that he had covered up their misdeeds and reassigned them to parishes where they could harm still more children.

It was not a new story. Indeed, the problem of pedophile priests has been a regular staple of the national press for some two decades. As far back as 1992, Law called the wrath of God down on the Globe for its tough reporting of an earlier priest scandal. And starting in March 2001, the Boston Phoenix’s Kristen Lombardi wrote a remarkable, award-winning series of reports laying out Cardinal Law’s culpability in the matter of defrocked priest John Geoghan, as well as the Church’s aggressive legal tactics.

But the Globe advanced the story in two crucial ways. First, the paper went to court to overturn a confidentiality agreement between the archdiocese and some of the victims’ families, paving the way for the release of internal Church documents. And second, it pounded away with new revelations day after day, month after month, using its full institutional weight to bring about change. The Globe’s reporting ultimately led to Law’s resignation as archbishop, and to ongoing lawsuits and investigations.

Martin Baron had barely started work as the new editor of the Globe when he read a column by Eileen McNamara — dated July 29, 2001 — reporting the existence of the confidentiality agreement. (It had earlier been reported by Lombardi.) Baron, previously executive editor of the Miami Herald, immediately started the wheels moving toward challenging it in court. " Marty was the engine that drove this, " says Spotlight Team editor Walter Robinson, who directed much of the Globe’s coverage.

Baron says his goal was to get beyond the " quarreling " between the plaintiffs’ lawyers and the Church, recalling: " There was only one way around that, and that was to challenge the court order. " Ultimately, Superior Court judge Constance Sweeney ruled in the Globe’s favor.

Samantha Power, a native of Ireland who is the founder of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, at Harvard’s Kennedy School, wrote about ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia for U.S. News & World Report and the Economist. Her book, which grew out of that reporting, is a sweeping look at genocide and the United States’ inability or unwillingness to do anything about it — from the Armenians of Turkey to the Jews of Europe, from Cambodia to Rwanda and, finally, to the Muslim enclaves of Bosnia and Kosovo, where the United States and its European allies took action against the regime of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

Power, who was traveling at the time of the Phoenix’s deadline, could not be reached for comment on her Pulitzer for general nonfiction. But there’s no doubt that it’s relevant to the historical moment. In a recent piece for the New Republic, she criticized the Bush administration’s " militant moralism " and unilateralism in its insistence on removing Saddam Hussein. " Few who oppose the U.S. attack do so because they disagree with Bush’s characterization of the Iraqi regime, " she wrote. " Most do so because of what they take to be the character of the U.S. regime. "

Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast regional director of Amnesty International USA, says of Power’s Pulitzer, " It reinforces that concern for human rights must continue to be at the center of American foreign policy. " And he notes, too, that yet another Pulitzer was also awarded for a human-rights issue: the editorial-writing prize, which went to Cornelia Grumman, of the Chicago Tribune, for her strong stand against the death penalty.

The Catholic Church crisis is a long way from being over, human rights and genocide remain a terrible source of global suffering, and the death penalty continues to degrade us all. By recognizing work that remains unfinished, the Pulitzer judges drew attention not just to good journalism, but to the elusive quest for a better world.