- 6/4/2025
An inside look at the scandals that rocked Benedict's papacy.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00:00In February last year, Pope Benedict stunned the world by being the first pope to resign in 600 years.
00:00:22No person has had more influence on the life of the church, how it works on the inside, than Joseph Ratzinger.
00:00:29And he gave it up.
00:00:31When the helicopter took him away, Benedict was leaving behind a bitterly divided Vatican.
00:00:39This is the inside story of the events that undermined his papacy.
00:00:43It's a story of corruption and cover-up.
00:00:46If I don't get a response from you, I go public.
00:00:52Of sexual scandal and abuse.
00:00:54If you tell anybody, your parents will burn in hell.
00:00:57Of secrets and hypocrisy.
00:01:00So there we were, where they had had sex all night long, and he took out all his paraphernalia
00:01:05and started to celebrate mass.
00:01:08And a story of leaked documents exposing a bitter internal power struggle.
00:01:14Unpublished documents dealing with corruption, scandals, frauds, nepotism.
00:01:23Now, a new pope, Francis, must battle the forces that overwhelmed his predecessor.
00:01:29If he wants to change the church, it's going to mean decisive action.
00:01:36And it's risky to take on the Vatican Curia.
00:01:38Tonight on Frontline, Secrets of the Vatican.
00:01:45An το νατέρου
00:01:48239-11
00:01:49An το νατέρου
00:01:50The 192-11
00:01:51An το νατέρου
00:01:52A σχεδια Да σχεδια
00:01:54A σχεδια
00:01:55An το νατέρου
00:01:56The 193-11
00:01:58And the 192-11
00:02:00An το νατέρου
00:02:00But the 193-11
00:02:01Căd΄
00:02:02And the 193-11
00:02:03An το νατέρου
00:02:04Csa Ιωάννη
00:02:06A year ago, when the cardinals converged on Rome to elect a new pope, they all understood
00:02:20what was at stake.
00:02:22The atmosphere was the most serious, the most intense that I've ever, ever known because
00:02:28of the issues which the church was facing.
00:02:31At the top level in Rome, things were not going well.
00:02:36And then the shame of child abuse has had the most serious effect, I think, of the church,
00:02:41not just in the West, but I think all over the world.
00:02:45The Catholic Church, and in particular the pope, has the highest moral voice in the world.
00:02:52If that voice is diminished by scandals, that's a serious matter.
00:03:01This was one of the shortest conclaves ever.
00:03:08By the evening of the next day, white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel confirmed
00:03:20that 1.2 billion Catholics had a new pope.
00:03:27He said, I'll give you my blessing.
00:03:34But before the bishop blesses the people, he said, I want you to pray over me.
00:03:40You could have heard a pin drop.
00:03:41And there were people crying in the square with joy.
00:03:43Pope Francis comes on the scene at a time when he says, I'll give you my blessing.
00:03:46He said, I'll give you my blessing.
00:03:47He said, I'll give you my blessing.
00:03:48But before the bishop blesses the people, he said, I want you to pray over me.
00:03:53You could have heard a pin drop.
00:04:00And there were people crying in the square with joy.
00:04:07Pope Francis comes on the scene at a time when the church is in a deep crisis.
00:04:13He said, the church is like a field hospital after a battle.
00:04:18He's talking about people who are wounded within the church.
00:04:23A new beginning for a wounded church.
00:04:33Eight years earlier, when Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict,
00:04:38he also promised a new beginning.
00:04:41He was taking over at a time when the church was reeling
00:04:44from the scandal of sexual abuse by the clergy.
00:04:47And he promised firm action.
00:04:50I still remember very clearly when Cardinal Ratzinger, in 2005,
00:04:56went through the Stations of the Cross.
00:04:59At the ninth station, I think, he stopped and denounced all the filth
00:05:04that is inside the church.
00:05:06But he said, it's not the people from outside who bring the filth into the church.
00:05:11It is us who make it dirty.
00:05:15He knew a lot about filth in the church.
00:05:19For 24 years, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
00:05:25Cardinal Ratzinger had been responsible for matters of theology and discipline.
00:05:30Many serious cases of priestly abuse crossed his desk.
00:05:34None more troubling than the scandal surrounding the Legionaries of Christ.
00:05:39A scandal that, until very recently, the church fought hard to suppress.
00:05:45The Legionaries was one of the fastest-growing orders in the church,
00:05:50recruiting young men in great numbers from countries across the world.
00:05:54The order was founded in 1941 by Marcial Maciel,
00:06:01a young man with powerful family connections to Mexico's conservative Catholic elite.
00:06:07Marcial was the greatest fundraiser of the modern church.
00:06:13The man had a gilded touch.
00:06:16Journalist Jason Berry spent years investigating Marcial and the Legionaries of Christ.
00:06:22He could get millionaires and the wives and widows of multi-millionaires to support his movement of renaissance orthodoxy.
00:06:32And he was bringing in a great many young men to this religious order that saw itself on a crusade to save the church from the decay of the modern world.
00:06:43The Marcial case is one of the darkest chapters in the history of the contemporary church, without a doubt, without a doubt.
00:06:55In 1947, ten-year-old Juan Vaca was personally chosen by Marcial to enter one of his seminaries.
00:07:03Like all the other boys, he had to swear before God that he would never speak ill of Marcial.
00:07:10I was enrolled with that mentality Marcial gave us, that we were a very selected group, an elite, chosen by God to conquer the world.
00:07:20But at the same time, he started to control our mind, to control our communication with our parents.
00:07:29On a winter's night in 1949, Marcial's control of Juan Vaca reached another level.
00:07:36We used to go to bed after last prayers in chapel.
00:07:40A colleague of mine said,
00:07:43Nuestro padre, our father, wants you to go to his bedroom.
00:07:48In his bedroom?
00:07:51To me, as a child, it was very strange.
00:07:54Anyway, I went to his bedroom, he was already in bed, and he took my hand and said,
00:08:03Please give me a massage in my stomach because I have terrible pain.
00:08:07He said, Lower, lower.
00:08:09Finally, I was touching his penis and got an erection.
00:08:15I felt completely petrified.
00:08:18I was in shock.
00:08:20So after a few seconds, I would say, I felt his semen in my hand.
00:08:29So, okay, Marcial said, now I feel much better.
00:08:34Now you can go and go back to sleep.
00:08:37The next morning, after a sleepless night, Juan felt unable to follow the call to mass and went straight to Marcial's office.
00:08:50I told him, I cannot go to communion because I committed a sin last night with you.
00:08:57He said, No, Juan, don't worry.
00:08:59I gave you the absolution.
00:09:01I forgive you.
00:09:02And he gave me the sacramental absolution of a sin.
00:09:09He said, Don't worry.
00:09:11What you did was an act of charity because you helped me to relieve my pain.
00:09:16You didn't commit a sin.
00:09:21The abuse continued on a regular basis,
00:09:24and Juan discovered that there were 20 other boys involved.
00:09:28In the meantime, the legion went from strength to strength.
00:09:37Juan Vaca was ordained in 1969 and became Marcial's deputy.
00:09:43But he was caught in a twisted relationship.
00:09:49He never touched me again since 1961.
00:09:52But I knew he was doing it with others.
00:09:56Marcial was also abusing drugs,
00:09:59dolentine, a derivative of morphine.
00:10:03In 1971, Father Vaca was given a senior position with the legionaries in the United States.
00:10:09But by now, he was in conflict with himself.
00:10:13I am lying to people, getting money for the missions when it's been used to support this type of life Marcial is having.
00:10:25Eventually, Father Vaca wrote a document setting out all the crimes he'd witnessed and presented it to Marcial personally, with a request to be released from the legionaries.
00:10:36Everything is right here in these papers, please read.
00:10:39So, when he was like halfway, he started to cry, you know.
00:10:45He said, Juan, you cannot do this to me.
00:10:49You did this more than that to me for 32 years, and this is it.
00:10:55Well, I was just already making the decision to name you the second in command in the order.
00:11:05My assistant general said, Father, even if you give me your position, I don't want it. This is it.
00:11:14In 1976, Father Juan Vaca made a decision.
00:11:19He would send his damning report to the Vatican.
00:11:23I named 21 colleagues of mine that had been also abused.
00:11:28I witnessed the abuse myself.
00:11:31Father Vaca also described Marcial's misappropriation of funds to maintain his extravagant lifestyle,
00:11:38and the bribes he'd paid to doctors and the police.
00:11:41We knew that the letter was received, because we sent them through the diplomatic pouch,
00:11:48because we got protocol numbers such and such received,
00:11:53but no answer, no reply to the content of my information, nothing at all.
00:12:02Todos muy fuertes. Todos hijos e hijas de Padre Maciel.
00:12:06Not only did the Vatican not respond to the letter, but Pope John Paul led massive celebrations
00:12:15to mark both the 50th and the 60th anniversaries of Father Maciel's priestly ordination.
00:12:21The Vatican did nothing. John Paul continued to praise Maciel, despite the pending allegations.
00:12:32He described the founder of the Legionaries of Christ as, quote,
00:12:39an efficacious guide to youth.
00:12:44That, quote, incensed Maciel's victims.
00:12:49They would go public with the testimony they now had on Maciel.
00:12:54Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger...
00:12:59The official responsible for investigating child abuse cases was Cardinal Ratzinger.
00:13:05He had to respond to the news media about the charges against Maciel.
00:13:09There's a question whether you...
00:13:10Come to me when the moment is given. Not yet.
00:13:13But he was in a bind.
00:13:17John Paul's public celebration of Maciel made it very difficult for him to take action.
00:13:23And all the while, Maciel's activities went unchecked.
00:13:28The situation changed at the end of 2004.
00:13:32At that time, Cardinal Ratzinger made a decision, to his credit, that Maciel had to be investigated.
00:13:38So he sent a canon lawyer in his office, Monsignor Charles Shkicluna, to America and Mexico to take the testimony of these men.
00:13:48He clearly knew that whoever would become the next pope needed to have Maciel under investigation,
00:13:58lest the Vatican be tarnished by the scandal of a much-accused pedophile and nothing happening to him.
00:14:07With the death of Pope John Paul, it was Ratzinger himself, now Pope Benedict, who would have to pursue the case against Maciel.
00:14:22Once he's pope, then the question becomes, how do you deal with this man?
00:14:27What should have happened was the order should have been disbanded.
00:14:31And instead, he invited him to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance.
00:14:38There was no description of his crimes, no apologies to his victims.
00:14:43Why didn't he just banish him? Why?
00:14:46Because the Legionaries of Christ is a large and very wealthy order and puts lots of money in the Vatican's coffers.
00:14:54The Legion, which had defended him all along, never admitted that he abused any of these altar boys or young seminarians.
00:15:01The Legionaries announced, at his death, that he had gone to heaven.
00:15:08A year later, the Legionaries announced that he had a child.
00:15:16Well, it soon became apparent that he had a grown daughter living with her mother, one of Maciel's paramours in Madrid.
00:15:24And it turned out, a son by another woman in Mexico.
00:15:36The price of the church's failure to act was revealed in Jason Berry's interview with Raul Gonzalez.
00:15:43He was a good person when acts like our daddy and a demon when he acts like a predator.
00:15:58Maciel lived multiple lives, and this is a rare glimpse of him on holiday.
00:16:07Raul and his half-brother Omar would be invited on trips like these.
00:16:12But Raul says there was a heavy price for the boys to pay.
00:16:17All the days that we stayed with my dad, on every trip, there were abuses.
00:16:24Was it mostly masturbation?
00:16:26No.
00:16:27Well, I feel really sorry by my brother because he was penetrated by my dad.
00:16:40And my brother also penetrated him because my dad told him that that's the way he was going to learn.
00:16:52And he always told us how to kiss.
00:16:57We have to kiss him because that's the way we were going to learn how to kiss a girl when we grew up.
00:17:07And you were 10, 11 years old?
00:17:09Um.
00:17:10Ten.
00:17:11Whoa.
00:17:12I guess I have to stop.
00:17:16He took me on a, how do you say it?
00:17:25On a walk.
00:17:27He said.
00:17:39Well, Ratzinger gave his famous sermon shortly before the funeral of John Paul referring to filth in the church.
00:17:48Many people believe, as I do, that he was really referring to Maciel.
00:17:52And by that time, he had a good deal of information on him.
00:17:58And as Pope Benedict, he also knew as much as anyone in the church, the extent of the clergy sex abuse scandal.
00:18:06He took every opportunity to apologize.
00:18:09He took, I think, of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children, especially within the church and by her ministers.
00:18:19There is no doubt that for a person like Joseph Ratzinger, who is so engaged in faith, these crimes are horrible.
00:18:28And during his trip to the United States, he told it to the reporters, saying, there is no place, there has not to be place in the church for such people.
00:18:38I had the opportunity to meet Cardinal Ratzinger a couple of times when he was a cardinal.
00:18:44And I found him to be a very charming, self-effacing, gentle person.
00:18:49When he encountered, as Pope, the issue of sexual abuse of children, I think his reaction was genuine.
00:18:57But he was a creature of the institutional church. That's the only life he ever knew, and he could not do what was necessary.
00:19:03He's a shy man, he's a very kind man, and they made him pope.
00:19:09He had absolutely zero pastor experience.
00:19:13Joseph Ratzinger should never, ever have been a bishop.
00:19:17He just didn't have the gifts, the charism.
00:19:20He's a theologian, he's a catechist.
00:19:23He didn't have the administrative skills.
00:19:25So when the clergy sexual abuse scandal exploded into an international crisis on his watch,
00:19:31Pope Benedict seemed unable to take charge, while the church hierarchy responded as it had done for years.
00:19:39I worked from 1981 to 1986 as the secretary canon lawyer at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C.
00:19:49In that role, Father Doyle's job was to deal with sexual abuse cases on behalf of the church.
00:19:55My job was to talk to the diocese and find out what was going on, and above all, see that they kept the lid on,
00:20:02that there was no publicity, that it didn't become known to the public causing scandal.
00:20:07Then he began to have doubts about what he was doing.
00:20:11Even at the early stages, I had met some of the victims, and I was, my life was changed when I met them.
00:20:17Then it went from a purely academic issue, from names on a piece of paper, to human beings.
00:20:26And that, of course, for me at least, it was a drastic change.
00:20:30The need for all of us...
00:20:32Faced with so many cases, Father Doyle decided to speak out.
00:20:36...physical and spiritual abuse that these...
00:20:39I believe I saw the inside of the workings of the institutional church in a way that I had never believed even existed.
00:20:47I was severely disillusioned.
00:20:50Because if Christ were here today, he'd be with them.
00:20:55Those of us who have been the most outspoken and the most directly accusatory of the hierarchy
00:21:02have lost any possibility of a career in the clerical world.
00:21:08I am still a priest, but I am not active in the official ministry of the Catholic Church.
00:21:13I do not wear clerical garb at all, because I see clericalism as one of the most prominent and important causes for this entire problem.
00:21:23The attitude that the clergy are somehow removed and above other Catholics,
00:21:29and that we have to be protected at all costs.
00:21:32Father Doyle is not alone.
00:21:34Other priests have now come forward, and in spite of retaliation by the church,
00:21:39are speaking out on behalf of victims.
00:21:41We're actually doing what the church theology, the teaching of the Second Evangelical Council,
00:21:46and the church law says we ought to be doing.
00:21:48Yes.
00:21:49Yes.
00:21:50All the Christian faith, everybody, they have a right and even an obligation
00:21:56to make their concerns known, not only to church leaders, but all the rest of the Christian faithful.
00:22:04We're just trying to heal through this.
00:22:06We want to be able to trust the clergy.
00:22:09It's hard.
00:22:11It's just very hard.
00:22:13One of the wonderful things about coming together for us has been just to listen, you know, and to hear.
00:22:21I have carried this guilt and shame with me for how many decades?
00:22:27And it's like, it's not mine.
00:22:29It never was.
00:22:30This was done to me.
00:22:32I carried it for decades, so...
00:22:34When the church chose to suppress stories of clergy sexual abuse,
00:22:38it was to silence people like Monica Barrett.
00:22:42It was a Saturday, and I was eight years old, and my father took my younger sister and I,
00:22:52and we drove out to Lake Geneva to visit with this priest, William Effinger.
00:22:57At one point in the day, Father Effinger said he needed help in the church with candles.
00:23:03And my father said, go help him.
00:23:07And we went into the church where he assaulted me for a period of time and ultimately ended up raping me.
00:23:18While he was raping me, I didn't understand what was happening.
00:23:30I just knew there was this incredible pain and I could hardly breathe.
00:23:35And I kept praying that God would just let me die.
00:23:40And when he finished, he stood up and he looked at me.
00:23:45And he said, if you tell anybody what you did, they won't believe you.
00:23:51And if you tell anybody, your parents will burn in hell.
00:23:56And then he gave me penance to do.
00:24:01And he turned and looked at me, and he smoothed his hair back with both of his hands.
00:24:08And he walked down the aisle of the church.
00:24:13And I remember hearing the door closed.
00:24:17And I just hid there because I didn't know what I should do.
00:24:22And eventually, I realized that there was blood on my legs,
00:24:27and there was blood on the new purple shorts that my grandma had given to me for my birthday.
00:24:33And so when I got to the end of the aisle of the church, I wiped the blood off with some of the holy water.
00:24:42And I went and I sat outside under this big tree.
00:24:45And I was just crying because I was in pain, and I didn't understand what had happened to me, and I was scared.
00:24:54As a child who went to Catholic school, we were taught that the priest is basically the closest you'll ever get to God.
00:25:03And for me, when I was raped by that priest, it just pulled my entire foundation out from under me.
00:25:13Everything was just taken away in that day.
00:25:17Eventually, Father Effinger was convicted of sexual assault on another child and died in prison.
00:25:27Monica never got her day in court because of the statute of limitations.
00:25:33But the Diocese of Milwaukee sued her to recover $14,000 in legal expenses.
00:25:40They very much were trying to intimidate me and to beat me down and to hold me out as the example saying,
00:25:47this is what will happen to you if you come forward and tell your truth.
00:25:53Monica was not alone in her battle for justice in Milwaukee.
00:25:57Hers was one of hundreds of cases which were aggressively challenged by the diocese
00:26:02as they were compelled to pay about $30 million in settlements.
00:26:06In all these years, I have to say that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has a demonstrated history
00:26:14of having been both the most callous and the most disturbing, the most disturbing.
00:26:21They have fundamentally violated the fundamental safety principles applying to children.
00:26:29Jeff Anderson has represented victims of clergy abuse for 29 years.
00:26:34He has long argued that Milwaukee is following procedures laid down in Rome.
00:26:39When it comes to the Vatican and its role in this crisis,
00:26:45all I have ever seen them do is talk,
00:26:52both denying responsibility and saying that they're doing something,
00:26:57when in fact they're doing nothing other than what they've done in the past for decades and centuries,
00:27:03which is deny, minimize, blame, keep secrets and protect themselves.
00:27:09Intimidation is the strategy. It's not part of it. It is the strategy.
00:27:14You've exposed this part of us. We're coming after you. We're coming after you.
00:27:20And no one's going to dare to file a lawsuit again.
00:27:23And it's meant to intimidate and make people afraid.
00:27:26When he was 13 years old, Peter Isley entered St. Lawrence Seminary in Wisconsin.
00:27:32At a very, very young age, I had an absolute faith and belief and love of the Roman Catholic Church,
00:27:41of its rituals, of its traditions, even as a small boy.
00:27:45At the seminary, Peter was a victim of repeated sexual abuse by his spiritual director, Father Liefeld.
00:27:55In 1988, when Peter was in his late 20s, he found the courage to confront his abuser
00:28:01and report to the church authorities.
00:28:04He soon discovered that he was not alone.
00:28:08There were survivors just independent of each other, just starting to come forward across the United States.
00:28:15Now we know across the world, but starting—and we all went down the same path,
00:28:18which was we went to the religious officials and authorities, first the bishops and the provincials,
00:28:23and reported to them what had happened to us.
00:28:25And now in my case, there were promises made.
00:28:28The provincial told me, we're going to keep Father Liefeld away from children.
00:28:31We've got him in a secure treatment facility. He's never going to be around children, this kind of thing.
00:28:35It's when I found out that they had lied to me, that he was in fact around children,
00:28:39that he was under no supervision at all, that there was no consequences whatsoever,
00:28:44that no one was watching him, that I then came forward publicly.
00:28:47Six years later, Father Liefeld was finally arrested
00:28:51and admitted other past abuses in this court deposition.
00:28:55I know that I touched his penis.
00:28:59I don't remember whether or not he touched mine.
00:29:06I didn't understand that there would be a psychological damage to the young man.
00:29:18I'm the victim.
00:29:20You are.
00:29:21So why am I in hell?
00:29:24Peter Isley founded the Milwaukee chapter of SNAP,
00:29:27a survivor's network of those abused by priests.
00:29:31My brother is the victim of criminal sexual assault.
00:29:33I was raped at 13 years old in my church.
00:29:36He admitted to you, Bishop Skelbach, what he was and what he had done.
00:29:42You sent him back to work.
00:29:45Victims can't have peace until they have justice.
00:29:51He was reported to the archdiocese and by 14 families from that parish.
00:30:08And what does the archdiocese do?
00:30:13Transfer him again.
00:30:16Why?
00:30:21I want to know why!
00:30:25The Vatican has always claimed the responsibility for these cases
00:30:29rests with the local bishops and diocese.
00:30:33Jeff Anderson disagrees.
00:30:35In every case that we have worked on for 29 years,
00:30:41the Vatican and its role has been prominent.
00:30:51Because every action taken by every bishop and archbishop and cardinal,
00:30:56in connection with sexual abuse, is effectively orchestrated
00:31:00and controlled by the Vatican.
00:31:04Every action taken has demonstrated to us that all roads lead to Rome and to the Vatican.
00:31:16The Vatican's secret archives contained the church's records back through the centuries,
00:31:22including evidence relating to sexual abuse cases from the early Middle Ages to the present day.
00:31:29As a sovereign nation, the Holy See cannot be compelled to hand over its original documents
00:31:36or any copies held by their embassies worldwide.
00:31:42The only hope for those representing victims of sexual abuse is to sue individual dioceses.
00:31:49That was how Jeff Anderson was able to subpoena crucial correspondence between Monica's former archbishop,
00:31:56Cardinal Dolan, and Cardinal Jumez, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome.
00:32:02We have evidence that Archbishop Dolan got express permission from the Vatican
00:32:11to move $57 million from diocesan funds into a cemetery trust.
00:32:20And that permission was given by the Vatican almost immediately.
00:32:24Two key words in Latin from Cardinal Jumez said it all.
00:32:28Nihil obstat, nothing stands in your way.
00:32:34With these two words, the Vatican allowed the diocese to protect its millions
00:32:39from further legal claims of abuse victims.
00:32:44To me, it was designed to do one thing,
00:32:48to keep the archdiocese and the Vatican from having to account
00:32:53for their crimes and complicity in them.
00:32:56No other real or legitimate reason.
00:33:00The church argued that the money was always committed to their cemeteries,
00:33:04and a court upheld the transfer.
00:33:07Meanwhile, the diocese declared bankruptcy.
00:33:11While they recently proposed to set aside $4 million in a victim's fund,
00:33:16there are over 550 outstanding claimants,
00:33:20Monica Barrett and Peter Isley among them.
00:33:24This is a beautiful cemetery.
00:33:26They're doing a terrific job of really maintaining this sacred space.
00:33:31You don't need $57 million for this space and seven other cemeteries.
00:33:38The real purpose was to keep money from compensating childhood victims of sexual assault
00:33:43by priests in this archdiocese from court-ordered settlements, period.
00:33:48And that is so cynical and so just unacceptable.
00:33:53And it's just a further way of trying to hide things.
00:33:57You're hiding money in the cemetery just like you hide sex offenders in parishes.
00:34:10While Vatican departments worked with bishops from around the world
00:34:14to deal with the exploding clergy sex abuse crisis,
00:34:17the new pope brought his own ideas.
00:34:21The first publication of his papacy referred to the urgency of, quote,
00:34:26the current situation and the problem of homosexuality and the priesthood.
00:34:31It called on seminary directors to screen out gay men.
00:34:36Years earlier, he had changed the catechism to say that homosexuality was an objective disorder.
00:34:48He'd invited leading experts to Rome to advise the church.
00:34:53I was informed that there was going to be a meeting at the Vatican,
00:34:57and it was a scientific meeting that the Vatican was calling
00:35:01to learn more about child and adolescent sexual abuse.
00:35:06Dr. Martin Kafka and a distinguished international panel of psychiatrists
00:35:11tried to explain the complex set of factors that contributed to the crisis.
00:35:16But there was one issue his hosts were not keen to explore.
00:35:22The number of Catholic clergy who are accused of or prosecuted for
00:35:30child and adolescent sexual abuse vastly outnumber the number of Protestant clergy.
00:35:39So what is it about the Catholic clergy that makes them distinctly different?
00:35:45And one of those factors is this issue of suppressing one's sexuality to better serve God.
00:35:54They tried to address the issue of screening out gay men from the priesthood.
00:35:59The data that we have suggests that men who abuse children are probably equally likely to be heterosexual or homosexual in their adult orientation.
00:36:16But people who abuse adolescents, post-pubertal children, if you will, they are more likely to reflect their own adult sexual orientation in whom they victimize.
00:36:34And for so many years this had been a closed world of boys and young men.
00:36:39A lot of this abuse took place in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s.
00:36:44And things were a lot different back then.
00:36:47Young men were being recruited for the priesthood in high school.
00:36:51I think that having men be more mature before they matriculate in and understand what a life of celibacy is are equally potent ways of reducing the risk.
00:37:07Educating priests, more open discussion of sexuality.
00:37:12The American seminary in Rome is considered a model in this respect.
00:37:18Men are only admitted here after they've had real experience of life and say they are confident they can hold to their vows and face the challenges of celibacy.
00:37:29Giving up a biological family seems like a very small burden in light of the great gift that is to give myself totally out of love for God.
00:37:44Whatever sacrifices priesthood entails, even if that means giving up a biological family, that that's profoundly worth it.
00:37:51You know, and that at the end of my life I will be profoundly happy.
00:37:55I love the idea of family, but I do feel that a life devoted completely to God's church will not only be fulfilling, but completely life-giving to me and I hope to the people that I'm entrusted towards.
00:38:08That's what Simone Alfieri believed when he chose the celibate life for eight years as a seminarian and a missionary.
00:38:16Then in 2008, he was recalled to Rome to be ordained as a priest by Pope Benedict himself.
00:38:24I wanted to give up all the women in the world, because I just wanted to be in love with God, and I wanted to follow this path always with the grace of God, because to be celibate with your own strength is impossible.
00:38:43Being ordained by the Pope was a great honor for me.
00:39:04It was a great honor for me.
00:39:05It was a powerful emotional experience.
00:39:11When we laid down, the entire assembly prayed for the saints to protect us.
00:39:25Catholics believe that through ordination you're transformed.
00:39:32It's a sacrament that changes your character.
00:39:38Five years on, and Simone is disillusioned, jobless, and living alone in an apartment borrowed from a friend.
00:39:46All the result of his decision to leave the church after his experiences of clerical life in Rome.
00:39:53Ordained in Rome, and living in a parish in Rome, I became disillusioned, because I saw that among priests there were many contradictions.
00:40:08A hunger for power, a hunger for power, ambition.
00:40:17Many priests, obviously not all of them, showed sexual hypocrisy.
00:40:25Some priests were very promiscuous, and I saw that all that was not what I thought the clerical mission should be.
00:40:38At Simone's ordination, Pope Benedict urged young priests to be the doormat of the faithful, to clean the souls of those who come in.
00:40:48But the hypocrisy he saw around him disturbed Simone, and after a time of prayer and contemplation, he decided he wanted to live a normal life, and go where his heart took him.
00:41:01When Valentina appeared, I knew she was the one for me.
00:41:06I decided to take responsibility, and to go to the cardinal, to declare myself, and appeal for dispensation from clerical celibacy.
00:41:17I used to go to the church where he was a priest.
00:41:20He used to be my sister's confessor, and I often saw him talking to her.
00:41:26He was really funny, good-looking, obviously, so the fact that he was unique caught my attention.
00:41:35Then, talking to him and seeing him more often with other people, I fell in love.
00:41:45But for refusing a secret relationship, and insisting on a marriage in church, Simone and Valentina have paid a heavy price.
00:41:55Clergy and congregation in their former church were so hostile, they had to worship elsewhere.
00:42:01They were really hard, mean, unreasonable.
00:42:06They judged and despised us.
00:42:11They put real strain on our relationship.
00:42:14For me, it's been tough psychologically.
00:42:18It's been difficult for both of us.
00:42:20And it's still difficult, isn't it?
00:42:22Eventually, the pressure was too great for both of them, and the relationship has ended.
00:42:31Simone has left Rome, he says, for good.
00:42:37I came here when I was a seminarian in 1986, and I remember I had this very wide-eyed idea of the Vatican, of these holy cardinals and holy men.
00:42:52And I was shocked within a matter of weeks, months, at the careerism, at the sexual innuendo, just the whole kind of non-holy life that I had expected.
00:43:11A large part of the hierarchy is homosexual.
00:43:20Certainly at the top levels of the church, in the curia, many important people, such as bishops and archbishops, are gay.
00:43:29He's a Vatican guide, who says he's had relationships with several priests.
00:43:34Here in Rome, it's very easy to meet a gay priest, on a bus, in a church.
00:43:40And important churches, like St. Peter's.
00:43:43It's even easier when you go to gay clubs and gay bars.
00:43:49You see them in the bars, and then at the altar, the following Sunday.
00:43:56The world he is describing was captured by reporter Carmelo Abate, who began a two-year investigation when a gay friend told him he'd just had sex with a priest.
00:44:08The priest went on to say, actually on Saturday, there will be a party here in Rome, in a club in Testaccio, with me and lots of other priests.
00:44:17We've also booked two escorts from Turin, from Piemonte, who will be the entertainers at the party.
00:44:24If you like, you're invited. I'd love you to join us.
00:44:31Abate went with his friend to the party, and took a hidden camera.
00:44:37My objective was to write a story for my newspaper, not to make videos.
00:44:45But I knew very well what I was going into.
00:44:48I knew very well how the church authorities could react.
00:44:52So I wanted to make sure I had evidence to support my story.
00:44:59The priest hosting the party greeted them, flanked by the two escorts.
00:45:05I would have said that half of the people there might have been priests.
00:45:12And it wasn't just a guess. They introduced themselves as priests.
00:45:18Some worked at the Vatican, others in the institutions that cluster around the Vatican in Rome.
00:45:28The party in Rome ended at my friend's house. At the end of the party, we all went back to his place.
00:45:40Then my friend and the French priest locked themselves in a bedroom, and I went to sleep in another room.
00:45:48The next day, Abate continued to film.
00:45:53Then came the moment that I found most shocking of all.
00:45:57And that was the moment that opened my eyes to what was really going on.
00:46:04It wasn't just a matter of sex. It was something more.
00:46:11So there we were, in that atmosphere, in that house where they had had sex all night long,
00:46:16and with that man wearing vestments, and he took out all his paraphernalia and started to celebrate Mass.
00:46:22For his book, Abate says he met and interviewed many other priests in Rome who lived double lives.
00:46:31There is a widespread culture here in Rome of tacit consent,
00:46:38in the way that we know, but we don't talk about it.
00:46:41Francesco, a former seminarian, says he had a relationship with a priest who has since risen to a high position in the Vatican.
00:46:50He kept telling me that he was giving me his body, but his soul belonged to the church, to God.
00:46:59The reasoning goes, I'm a priest, but I have this need.
00:47:06I'll satisfied, and then go back to being a priest.
00:47:09It's a bit like vestments. I wear them, I'm a priest.
00:47:14I take them off, and I'm just like anyone else.
00:47:17Unless you spend some time inside this kind of culture, it's very hard to believe that it could be like this.
00:47:29One of the biggest problems in the whole hierarchical structure, the clerical structure,
00:47:36is this hypocritical presence of so many homosexuals, gay men.
00:47:43Many of them would not even classify themselves as gay men because they're so conflicted.
00:47:48The Benedict doctrine on homosexuality was deeply hurtful to those in the Vatican who were trying to lead celibate lives.
00:47:57I cannot understand.
00:48:00I cannot understand this schizophrenic attitude of the hierarchy against gay,
00:48:10when a lot of priests are gay.
00:48:15That's something that I cannot understand.
00:48:19As a gay priest who works in the Vatican,
00:48:22he remembers his feelings when the then Cardinal Ratzinger changed the catechism
00:48:27to say that homosexuality was an objective disorder.
00:48:31It's like a knife in your heart because I believe in vocation.
00:48:40I believe in the calling of God.
00:48:43I believe in Jesus.
00:48:46I believe he wants us to serve his people.
00:48:50And when a document says, oh, you're not able...
00:48:56That is...
00:48:58That is terrible.
00:49:00It's painful.
00:49:03I hope that one day priests can be freely in a relationship and be good priests.
00:49:14That celibacy in the church will be optional.
00:49:19The don't ask, don't tell culture was invented inside the Vatican.
00:49:25I mean, I don't want to villainize everybody in the Vatican,
00:49:29because there are, I think, a lot of gay men in the Vatican
00:49:32who are very good people, who are celibate, are not having sex,
00:49:36who are struggling to be good priests.
00:49:40But the culture itself mitigates against that.
00:49:44It's difficult to be good in the Vatican.
00:49:47The Vatican is a world on its own, an independent state.
00:49:58And this is the guarded frontier that separates it from Italy, whose authorities have no powers here.
00:50:04The Vatican is the last absolute monarchy in the world today.
00:50:09The pope, when he is elected, is answerable to no human power.
00:50:15He has absolute authority over the entire Roman Catholic Church,
00:50:19direct authority that reaches down to individual members.
00:50:22He is the supreme judge, the supreme legislator, and the supreme executive.
00:50:28But as an executive, Benedict needed help.
00:50:35He turned to his long-time assistant, Cardinal Bertone, to be Secretary of State,
00:50:41effectively in charge of the Vatican's government, the Curia.
00:50:47The Vatican Curia, which is the administrative body of the worldwide church,
00:50:52is a collection of small fiefdoms, of cliques of individuals,
00:50:57of different agendas vying against one another.
00:51:02And it is the Curia that runs a city-state with its own legal system,
00:51:07its own TV channel, radio station, and newspaper.
00:51:12It even has its own bank, the Institute of Religious Works,
00:51:16housed in a medieval tower.
00:51:19The Bank of Italy, the highest authority in our banking system,
00:51:25has described the Vatican Bank as a foreign bank on our soil.
00:51:31We see the big walls of the Vatican as a national border.
00:51:36We cannot intervene in the Vatican.
00:51:41Nilo Rossi is a powerful figure in Italy.
00:51:44He prosecutes the most difficult cases, the mafia, corrupt politicians,
00:51:49and most recently, the Vatican Bank, which has a long and dark reputation for financial corruption.
00:51:56Politicians, businessmen, were using the Vatican Bank as an offshore to hide their money,
00:52:03to money launder, if you will, or not pay taxes.
00:52:07For years, the Italian authorities could do nothing.
00:52:11But when tough banking regulations were imposed across Europe in the wake of the financial crisis,
00:52:16only the Vatican Bank resisted.
00:52:19So the Italian finance police put the bank under close surveillance.
00:52:28Using all the tools at their disposal, they monitored transactions in and out of the Vatican Bank.
00:52:34They made their first breakthrough in the summer of 2010.
00:52:43In that case, it happened that an Italian bank received a request from the Vatican Bank to transfer 23 million euros.
00:52:53The Bank of Italy requested details for both payee and recipient in the transaction, and the reason for the transfer.
00:53:05The Vatican Bank failed to provide adequate information, so the Bank of Italy decided to freeze that money.
00:53:12The whole European banking community was up in arms.
00:53:16With account holders that included the Iranian and Iraqi embassies,
00:53:21there were fears that the bank could be used for money laundering.
00:53:24One bank after another refused to do business with the Vatican Bank, until it cleaned up its act.
00:53:30The Pope was increasingly concerned.
00:53:33Pope Benedict definitely wanted vigorous action and transformation.
00:53:41He wanted new anti-money laundering measures, a whole new system of control.
00:53:50He had already appointed Gotti Tedeschi, a highly respected banker and a professor of business ethics, to reform the bank.
00:53:58Gotti Tedeschi set about building relationships with the international organizations
00:54:04and indicated that all the regulations and standards must be applied to bring the Vatican into line with all the other banks operating in Europe.
00:54:16He really wanted to clean up the bank.
00:54:19But in the Vatican, there were people who didn't want that.
00:54:23Cardinal Bertoni, Pope Benedict's second-in-command, had been closely involved with the bank.
00:54:28He now insisted that the measures could not be applied retrospectively.
00:54:33Cardinal Bertoni was adamant, no, we will only allow them to look at what we're doing from this day forward.
00:54:41But the stuff from the past, you have no right to look at that.
00:54:45This was a drastic limitation on the information available to us.
00:54:50Cardinal Bertoni had outmaneuvered Tedeschi, who was then dismissed from his post.
00:55:00A devout Catholic, he said,
00:55:02I was very disappointed, hurt, and upset.
00:55:05I had been abandoned by the world of my church.
00:55:08It was so painful.
00:55:11We have seen good people like the ex-president of the Vatican Bank, Professor Gotti Tedeschi,
00:55:19kicked out overnight in a humiliating way.
00:55:26We've seen that Pope Benedict only found out from watching television that Gotti Tedeschi had been expelled.
00:55:34And it made him cry.
00:55:36If the Pope was disturbed by his failure to reform the bank,
00:55:40another blow to his authority was greater by far.
00:55:44One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
00:55:48It would be called Vatileaks.
00:55:51Gianluigi Nuzzi is a television journalist in Milan.
00:55:56He had written a book, Vatican Limited, about the Vatican's business dealings.
00:56:03One evening, he received a mysterious phone call from someone promising inside information.
00:56:11He was invited to a bar in Rome.
00:56:15After a series of meetings, the strangers invited him for a ride in their car.
00:56:20They went around Piazza Mazzini many times, checking that nobody was following us.
00:56:34Later, I understood the reasons.
00:56:37I was about to meet a certain person.
00:56:43And it would be very dangerous if anyone came to know that this person had seen me.
00:56:52Finally, Nuzzi was taken to an apartment.
00:56:55And I could see that nobody lived there.
00:56:58There was no furniture.
00:56:59There was nothing.
00:57:00It was an empty apartment.
00:57:02Just a corridor that we walked down until we reached a room with only one chair in the middle.
00:57:08And there my source was seated.
00:57:11And we began to talk.
00:57:14The source was Paolo Gabrielli, the Pope's butler.
00:57:18He was offering thousands of secret documents from the Pope's private office.
00:57:23He said he wanted to protect the Pope from the sleaze and corruption that surrounded him.
00:57:29He went on,
00:57:31I'm afraid the Pope doesn't have the strength to expel the money changers from the temple.
00:57:49Nuzzi broke the story on his program.
00:57:52But he was careful to protect the identity of his source.
00:57:55And over the months that followed, he released more and more secret documents.
00:58:02I published documents and stories dealing with corruption, scandals, frauds, nepotism, pedophilia, sexual abuses, self-advancement.
00:58:18All the issues.
00:58:21Which for so many years, too many years, no one wanted to talk about in relation to the Vatican.
00:58:28Vati leaks soon became an international sensation.
00:58:32Documents were spilling out showing that there was cronyism inside the Vatican.
00:58:37That there were sexual parties going on.
00:58:41People who were papal gentlemen who were involved with male choristers in choirs inside St. Peter's Basilica.
00:58:50We had contracts that were being inflated and given to friends of Monsignors and bishops inside the Vatican.
00:59:00Among the many documents was this letter to Pope Benedict, written by Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò,
00:59:05who in 2009 had been installed to clean up corruption in the Vatican City government,
00:59:12which controls the budget for all construction and maintenance in Vatican City.
00:59:20It is a center of power where, according to Viganò,
00:59:23there was widespread corruption and profiteering and faked expenses.
00:59:27Viganò cracked down hard, reducing overheads by $54 million in his first year.
00:59:35But he made enemies in the process, and they plotted against him.
00:59:42He turned to Pope Benedict, writing two or three letters, begging for help.
00:59:48He wanted to continue with his work.
00:59:50He warned Benedict about corruption in every single department of the Vatican.
01:00:00He also made the lethal mistake of accusing the Pope's powerful deputy, Cardinal Bertoni,
01:00:06of orchestrating a conspiracy against him.
01:00:10The mistake that Viganò made was the fact that he asked the Pope to make a choice,
01:00:16me or Bertoni.
01:00:17No one in the Vatican can speak to the Holy Father in that way.
01:00:22Viganò was offering his enemies the perfect opportunity to aim the gun at his own head,
01:00:28and he lost.
01:00:32If Viganò was no match for Cardinal Bertoni,
01:00:35the Vatelic's documents showed that others were so concerned about Bertoni's influence
01:00:40that they also appealed directly to the Pope.
01:00:43A group of Cardinals went to Castel Gandolfo, Benedict's summer residence.
01:00:50They went there basically to call for the head of Cardinal Bertoni, his Secretary of State.
01:00:58It was a dramatic and decisive meeting, because when they sat down to have this conversation,
01:01:04the Pope kicked them out, saying, nobody will remove Bertoni.
01:01:12And the Pope got very angry.
01:01:14And evidently, he said,
01:01:16Der Mann bleibt hier. Basta! The man stays. Enough!
01:01:21Mixing German and Italian.
01:01:22That was the word that came out, and they were all shocked.
01:01:27And he didn't want to hear anything more about it.
01:01:29It was the sheer quantity and detail of the leaked documents that shocked the Pope,
01:01:35and he was determined to find the source.
01:01:37So he appointed Cardinal Haranz Casado to lead a team of senior Cardinals to carry out a thorough investigation.
01:01:47Their rank is significant.
01:01:50No one can interrogate a Cardinal except another Cardinal.
01:01:54Which does suggest that Benedict believed there were Cardinals responsible for these leaks.
01:01:59What he certainly didn't expect was that it would turn out to be his own butler.
01:02:05The trial against Pope Benedict XVI's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, opened on Saturday.
01:02:11Vatican Television put a camera in the courtroom, and a select group of journalists were invited inside.
01:02:18For those who witnessed the proceedings, it had all the elements of a show trial.
01:02:22It was so scripted and so narrowly focused on the fact that the butler had to have been the only one that chose the documents,
01:02:31that leaked them to the journalists, that took them out of the safety of the Vatican.
01:02:37His defense lawyer was very much aligned with the prosecutor.
01:02:41Everything was really kept on message.
01:02:44I was at the man's trial.
01:02:46There were documents that were leaked.
01:02:48He supposedly leaked.
01:02:50That were written in languages that he does not speak.
01:02:52How would he even know that they were important?
01:02:55Nobody that I've spoken to, that I continue to speak to in the Vatican, really believed that the butler did it.
01:03:03He was a scapegoat.
01:03:05The highest authorities in the Vatican didn't want to show to the public opinion the network.
01:03:14How many supporters there were around the butler, Paolo Gabrielli, in this planned action.
01:03:24The trial lasted for just five days.
01:03:28Gabrielli was found guilty and sentenced to 18 months.
01:03:32Just before Christmas of 2012, Benedict pardoned him.
01:03:37I assumed that there was a deal done that you will remain quiet and we will give you a job.
01:03:46He still has his pension.
01:03:47He hasn't lost anything with his conviction.
01:03:50This is, you know, the biggest betrayal we've ever seen against a sitting pope.
01:03:56And he's got a great, he's come out of it with everything he had before.
01:04:01If the pope's butler really was responsible for all these leaks,
01:04:04then the work of the investigating cardinals was done.
01:04:08But the Vadelic's revelations evidently horrified Benedict.
01:04:12And he insisted that Cardinal Horace should continue his inquiry, but in absolute secrecy.
01:04:19It was to be an X-ray inquiry into the Roman Curia, more detailed than ever before.
01:04:29Investigative journalist Ignacio Ingrao tracked down 18 insiders who had testified before Cardinal Horace's commission.
01:04:39They included two cardinals and nine bishops.
01:04:43Some of them also disclosed to us what they said during their deposition under oath.
01:04:49People who testified before these Cardinals talked about what we call in Italian, the machine of the slime.
01:05:03In other words, dossiers of documents created to destroy reputations.
01:05:08All based on lies.
01:05:09There were some groups bound together by homosexuality.
01:05:20It cemented relationships by brotherhood or blackmail.
01:05:27This is the map that was drawn, the picture that emerged from the dossier that the Cardinals handed in to Benedict.
01:05:42Cardinal Horace and his team of investigators probed all the darkest areas of the Vatican
01:05:47and presented their full report, the so-called Red Dossier, to Benedict on December 17th, 2012.
01:05:58On February 28th, Benedict resigned.
01:06:01Maybe governance wasn't his strong point.
01:06:14It was very difficult for him.
01:06:16And I think when he said, I'm resigning because of old age, really, and weakness,
01:06:20and that he felt he could not face the challenges because of lack of strength.
01:06:24I was very honest, very open, very brave.
01:06:26When the helicopter sped him away to the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo,
01:06:39Benedict was leaving behind him a church in crisis.
01:06:42Two weeks later, white smoke from the Sistine Chapel signaled the 266th successor to the throne of St. Peter.
01:07:02He didn't say anything for the first few minutes.
01:07:20He just looked at the crowd almost as if, oh, I can't believe this is me.
01:07:24He was looking around.
01:07:26It was very, very magical.
01:07:28It was very personal for a lot of people.
01:07:33Fratelli e sorelle.
01:07:36Buonasera.
01:07:40I was there in that balcony of St. Peter's Basilica when he started saying,
01:07:48Good evening.
01:07:50That was amazing.
01:07:51You can't imagine the response of that huge crowd that was in St. Peter's Square.
01:07:58Because they expected a theological message and they found somebody that is warm, that is near, that is one of us.
01:08:09And then he said that he had come from, the Cardinals have chosen somebody from the ends of the earth, or the ends of the world, is what he said.
01:08:24It's almost the end of the world, but we're here.
01:08:27People related to him and accepted him, even though we didn't really know anything about him.
01:08:35Everybody had to look him up.
01:08:36People were Googling from the square, who is he? Where is he from?
01:08:40All they knew about him was that Francis was from Argentina,
01:08:48the first non-European to be elected pope for over 1,200 years, and thought to be a traditional conservative.
01:08:58But in a series of highly symbolic gestures, he signaled that he intended to lead a very different church.
01:09:07A church whose first duty was to serve the poor, the sick, and the underprivileged.
01:09:12He spent Holy Thursday in jail, washing the feet of young prisoners, including Muslim women.
01:09:26His very first papal visit outside Rome was to the island of Lampedusa,
01:09:32where he spent his time not with the locals, but with illegal migrants
01:09:37who had risked life and limb to make it to Europe.
01:09:39Francis is the first pope not to ever have studied in Rome, worked in Rome, or spent significant time in Rome.
01:09:49He's an outsider.
01:09:51He's a man that seems to be able to touch people, or to draw them out, or to give this sense of hope.
01:09:57One has to worry and wonder if he's ever going to be able to live up to the legacy that he already has created.
01:10:03He is already the best pope anyone can remember.
01:10:05Within weeks of becoming pope, Francis reached out to the wider church beyond Rome,
01:10:12appointing a group of cardinals drawn from six continents to help him take on the curia, the Vatican bureaucracy.
01:10:19When we talked the first time, it was very, very shortly after his election.
01:10:31He told me, I want to make a commission of cardinals to help me in the renovation of a Roman curia.
01:10:39And then he told me, would you dare to lead this commission?
01:10:46And I said, Holy Father, whatever you want.
01:10:48If you want me there, I will do it.
01:10:50Cardinal Maradiaga's diocese in Honduras, Central America, represents the sort of challenge Francis himself knows only too well.
01:11:03A country confronting poverty, crime, repression, and political instability.
01:11:11But Maradiaga says his friend Pope Francis believes that to do this work, the church can no longer be distracted by the scandals of recent years.
01:11:24It urgently needs to fix its own house.
01:11:27It's necessary to open the windows in the church because we need fresh air.
01:11:34Because, you know, after all what happened in the year before, especially with all these scandals of Batilix and the Institute for Opere di Religione from the bank.
01:11:48From also some cases of corruption with the narco business, some cases of pedophilia.
01:11:58The credibility of the church is in terrible danger.
01:12:04What is necessary to do?
01:12:07How can we listen to the voices of the Holy Spirit in order to change?
01:12:12Because everybody knew it was necessary to change many things.
01:12:15Pope Francis has shared that message in the most unlikely places.
01:12:26The phone rang.
01:12:29I've got the Pope on the line, and I really don't think we should keep him waiting.
01:12:35Eugenio Scalfari is the founder and former editor-in-chief of La Repubblica, Italy's leading newspaper on the left.
01:12:43He is also an atheist.
01:12:46The conversation we had started with some jokes, because that's his way.
01:12:53He said, some of my advisers have warned me to be careful talking to you, because you're a clever man, and you'll try to convert me.
01:13:02Me, converting the Pope.
01:13:05The Pope had phoned to invite Scalfari for a chat.
01:13:12It would be a wide-ranging discussion, which Scalfari described in an article that attracted worldwide attention.
01:13:17When it came to the church hierarchy, Francis was uncompromising.
01:13:24Heads of the church, he is quoted as saying, have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers.
01:13:30The court is the leprosy of the papacy.
01:13:34This Vatican-centric vision neglects the world around it, and I will do everything to change it.
01:13:40He said during our conversation that the church should consist of devoted people, priests and bishops who take care of souls.
01:13:54Not bishops that become bishops to run Vatican departments for their own self-importance.
01:14:09We're going from a church preoccupied with respecting the rules, as it was under John Paul II and Benedict XVI,
01:14:16towards a church that says, mercy is what really matters.
01:14:30Francis has said that the Catholic Church will fall like a house of cards
01:14:35if it fails to balance rules on abortion and homosexuality with the greater need to be merciful.
01:14:41On homosexuality, he asked, who am I to judge?
01:14:51But all this talk of change alarms traditionalists.
01:14:56There's a lot of conservative Catholics who are stunned by some of these comments,
01:15:02that the church should not be obsessed by abortion and homosexuality and birth control,
01:15:10but if they read carefully what he's saying,
01:15:16he says, I'm a son of the church and I believe in her teachings.
01:15:23But on one issue there is no ambiguity.
01:15:26Pope Francis's position on global capitalism.
01:15:30In this system with no ethics,
01:15:35the center is an idol,
01:15:39and the world has idolized the god, money.
01:15:44Here, Pope Francis spoke of the growing disparity between rich and poor,
01:15:51the young unable to find work,
01:15:53the elderly ignored and neglected.
01:15:55We have to say we don't want a globalized economic system that is harming us so much.
01:16:05Men and women must be at the center, as God wants, not money.
01:16:10Determined to put his own financial house in order, he appointed a commission of inquiry to complete a thorough investigation of the Vatican Bank.
01:16:24Just two days later, Monsignor Nuncio Scarano, a senior accountant in the Vatican's financial administration, was arrested.
01:16:39It was alleged that he and two others had tried to smuggle 20 million euros in cash from Switzerland to Italy on a private plane.
01:16:55He was arrested and soon found himself in the Queen of Heaven prison in Rome.
01:17:04It was the first time that anybody at this level in the Vatican had ever been arrested for a financial crime.
01:17:11A sign, perhaps, of changing times.
01:17:16The future of the Vatican Bank was also raised in an impromptu press conference Pope Francis gave to a surprised group of journalists.
01:17:34When we were flying back from Brazil, he was very, very clear that he is ready to make radical decisions, if necessary,
01:17:45to clean up the Vatican bureaucracy.
01:17:49I mean, he did not exclude the possibility of closing the Vatican Bank.
01:17:54I've got three options. Close it, fix it, fix it a little bit more.
01:17:59It's sort of like, wow, you know, this is not the way popes are supposed to speak to reporters.
01:18:04It was an amazing experience. He didn't dodge any question at all.
01:18:08By October, the bank was seeking to close 900 suspect accounts.
01:18:18There was a lot of money at stake, and Nicola Gratteri, a prominent anti-mafia prosecutor, issued a chilling warning for Francis.
01:18:26The Pope is dismantling centers of economic power in the Vatican.
01:18:31If the mob bosses can stop him, they won't hesitate.
01:18:35800 years ago, in this town, a wealthy young man gave away all he possessed,
01:18:49even his clothes, to devote his life to the poor.
01:18:56Pope Francis, who took the name of the saint, came to Assisi in a symbolic visit to once again reinforce his central message.
01:19:05But leaving many questions, political and personal, still unanswered.
01:19:11The Pope has said things and made statements that can be easily approved by everyone.
01:19:22When the Pope said it's necessary to help the poor people, no one objected to that.
01:19:28But the issues that always divide modern public opinion are the real life issues, family, gender, euthanasia, and so on.
01:19:41But so far, he's carefully avoided all the issues that could lead to conflict.
01:19:46A real minefield in the life of this Pope, because it's such a big issue in the Catholic Church,
01:19:57and it's not gone away even though they're singing hosannas to him right now,
01:20:01and that's the sexual abuse of minors, clergy sex abuse.
01:20:06I know a lot of Catholics would like it to be over, but it's not.
01:20:10We're seeing new cases all the time.
01:20:12If the Pope doesn't come out and set very clear, transparent, and public guidelines,
01:20:21and make statements, I think this could cripple him.
01:20:28If he wants to change the direction of the institutional church,
01:20:32it's going to mean decisive, risky action.
01:20:36And it's risky to take on the Vatican Curia.
01:20:39There are many in the Curia that are trembling, wondering what's going to happen,
01:20:44and trying to figure out ways to neutralize their fears that he is going to start shaking things up.
01:20:50If that starts and it begins to unravel, there's a lot of string in that ball.
01:20:54All efforts to reform the Curia over the last century, enacted by all the popes, failed.
01:21:05Will it succeed with Pope Francis?
01:21:09I don't know.
01:21:11I don't know if this papacy is going to last long enough to achieve this.
01:21:16When I conclude.
01:21:17Of course, many things are going to change.
01:21:27The Vatican State was like a kingdom, like a human kingdom.
01:21:32And so there were all the defects of a human court.
01:21:38But he wants things more simple.
01:21:43I am sure that the Holy Father will go in that direction and will not go back.
01:21:48Certainly not.
01:21:50Things are not going to continue like they were in the past.
01:21:53Go to pbs.org slash frontline.
01:22:14And take a closer look at the early record of Pope Francis and his plans for reform.
01:22:19Learn more about the mounting legal costs from the sex abuse crisis.
01:22:25The credibility of the church.
01:22:27Explore our extended interviews.
01:22:29They're singing hosannas to him right now.
01:22:31And connect to the frontline community.
01:22:34Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and pbs.org slash frontline.
01:22:49For more on this and other frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org slash frontline.
01:23:05Frontline's Secrets of the Vatican is available on DVD.
01:23:09To order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
01:23:15Frontline is also available for download on iTunes.
01:23:19Frontline is also available on TV.
01:23:20There is a check letter and a link according to the episode on TV series.
01:23:22Please proceed and subscribe.
01:23:40Hopefully something will be Tail- Alfhuman.
01:23:44You
Recommended
15:59
|
Up next
1:26:47
8:42
3:30
2:02
1:40
0:40
1:20
57:52
57:23
1:28:08
58:06
57:52
57:30