A concise account of the Catholic Church’s protection of its most errant priests. “At once cool and scalding, outraged and meticulous; a must-see for everyone, both inside and outside the 'House of God’.” — Financial Times
A conspiracy thriller far more exciting and sinister than Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which it closely resembles.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2013
Silence in the House of God 2012
Mea Maxima Culpa
Oscar winner Alex Gibney delivers a concise, sparingly emotive account of the Catholic Church’s persistent protection of its most errant priests.
“Responsibility for the child abuse scandal, Gibney contests, goes all the way to the Vatican and, yes, the outgoing Pope. This film, brilliantly structured, opens out from a prologue examining one man and one institution – a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, church school for the deaf whose now grown-up victims wage a campaign of testimony against the school’s former child-molesting Father – to a sweeping, even stunning, even stupefying survey of the Church’s negligence and sometimes (no other word) connivance. For more than 10 years Pope Benedict, then a cardinal heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, supervised the Vatican’s child abuse ‘account’ – and failed to bring anyone to account… This is a tremendous documentary: at once cool and scalding, outraged and meticulous; a must-see for everyone, both inside and outside the ‘House of God’.” — Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
Festivals: Toronto, London, Amsterdam Documentary 2012
Best Documentary, London Film Festival 2012