A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Featuring:
Carmen Aristegui, Jose Barba, Jason Berry, Christopher Kunze
Directed by:
Jason Berry
Release Date:
October 7, 2008
Original Title:
Vows Of Silence
Genres:
Documentary
Production Countries:
United States of America
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 61
Vows of Silence is an anatomy of the Vatican justice system, following the haunting saga of Father Marcial Maciel, who won the favor of Pope John Paul II despite years of pedophilia accusations. The greatest fundraiser of the modern church, Maciel founded the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order with a $650 million budget and history of controversial tactics.
Vows of Silence is an anatomy of the Vatican justice system, following the haunting saga of Father Marcial Maciel, who won the favor of Pope John Paul II despite years of pedophilia accusations. The greatest fundraiser of the modern church, Maciel founded the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order with a $650 million budget and history of controversial tactics. The film becomes a mystery story as it tracks abuse complaints filed in the Vatican against Maciel dating back to the 1950s, moving on to 1998 abuse charges against Maciel filed with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, tries to abort the case. In 2004, with Pope John Paul II dying, Ratzinger finally takes action. The film follows a secret Vatican investigator as witnesses testify about Maciel's sexual abuse, psychological tyranny, and the secret vows he imposed to secure Legionaries' silence. With location shoots in Rome, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Milwaukee and New Orleans, the film tracks Maciel's rise from war-torn Mexico, gaining the support of the Spanish dictator, Franco, and cementing ties with Vatican officials. A former Vatican official breaks his silence in an interview criticizing the Legion's cult-like atmosphere. As the evidence mounts, Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI, must decide the price of justice.
Click each video panel to show or hide.
Although TheMovieDB might provide a key to a YouTube video, there is no guarantee that the video might be present at YouTube.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.