8.2 /10 1 Votes
8.4/10 IMDb Producer Sarah Alexandra Macdonald | 8.4/10 Top Documentary Films 7.7/10 Documentary Heaven Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Initial release 1 October 2006 (United Kingdom) Cast Pope Benedict XVI, Colm O'Gorman, Thomas P Doyle, Brendan Comiskey, Oliver O'Grady Similar Twist of Faith, Deliver Us from Evil, Mea Maxima Culpa: Sil, Judgment, The Boys of St Vincent | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sex Crimes and the Vatican (2006) is a documentary film (39 min) filmed by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a Catholic priest in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford in Ireland when he was 14 years old.
Contents
Award winning documentary on opus dei
Crimen sollicitationis
It was filmed for the BBC's Panorama documentary series, and charged that the Vatican used a secret document, Crimen sollicitationis, to silence allegations of sexual abuse by priests and that Crimen sollicitationis was enforced for 20 years by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger before he became the Pope.
The Vatican refused repeated requests from Panorama to respond to any of the cases shown in the film.
Many Catholic Bishops, priests and laity expressed anger at what they perceived as a clear bias against the church. They state that the program made no effort to highlight the efforts made by the church in recent years to combat sex abuse, particularly the efforts taken by the English and Welsh Catholic Church under the leaderships of both Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor and Vincent Cardinal Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, both of whom have significantly improved child protection procedures within the Catholic Church.
Colm O'Gorman
Sex Crimes and the Vatican was filmed by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a Catholic priest in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford in Ireland when he was 14 years old. Father Seán Fortune was charged with 66 counts of sexual, indecent assault and another serious sexual offence relating to eight boys but he committed suicide on the eve of his trial. Colm started an investigation with the BBC in March 2002 called Suing the Pope which led to the resignation of Dr. Brendan Comiskey, the bishop leading the Ferns Diocese. Colm then pushed for a government inquiry which led to the Ferns Report.