VATICAN CITY
CNN
By Samuel Burke & Juliet Fuisz, CNN
Pope Benedict XVI bears personal responsibility for not holding sexually abusive priests in the Catholic Church accountable, alleges the director of a new documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.”
“From 2001 to 2005, as cardinal, [Benedict] ran the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And in that office, he looked over every sex abuse case that there was all over the world. So he’s the most knowledgeable person in the world about this issue,” director Alex Gibney told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “Then, as pope, he presided, as more and more information about this came out. And he was pretty much utterly ineffective in being able to stem the tide.”
Gibney, whose documentaries have taken on complicated characters from Jack Abramoff to Dick Cheney, says Benedict took some positive steps: “He did make some apologies. He did blame some bishops. But he took no responsibility for the Vatican itself. So, in a way, I think this whole sex abuse crisis engulfed Benedict.”
“Mea Maxima Culpa” focuses on the case of Father Lawrence Murphy, an American priest who is accused of molesting as many as 200 boys at St. John’s School for the Deaf. The film traces his case to the highest levels of Church power.
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