This film exposes the high-level corruption within the Vatican Church while trying to understand why child abuse within this institution is so rampant and on a global scale.
In her Academy Award nominated (2006) documentary, Deliver Us From Evil, director Amy Berg uses gripping testimony by victims, interviews with expert witnesses and archival footage to reveal the Catholic Church's shocking cover up of ongoing incidents of child abuse by members of the clergy.
The film focuses specifically on the case of Father Oliver O’Grady, the notorious pedophile priest who raped and sodomized hundreds of boys and girls aged nine months through adolescence, and one adolescent victim’s mother, over the course of 20 years.
During this time, church superiors avoided exposure to scandal by reassigning O'Grady from one California parish to another, never punishing him, failing to prevent his ongoing predatory behavior and never protecting parishioners from his ongoing abhorrent abuse.
The film traces the trail of deceit and shame all the way to Pope Benedict XVI, who has been accused of conspiracy to cover up the crimes. According to the film, the Vatican asked President Bush to grant the Pope immunity from prosecution—-and got it.
Yet, the film shows us that when O’Grady’s victims and their families traveled to Rome to petition the Pope for mercy and justice, they were turned away from the Vatican without an audience.
The Church declined to be interviewed for the documentary.
Like many documentaries, Deliver Us From Evil has a focused and transparent agenda. Director Amy Berg wants to raise public awareness about the unacceptable situation. She reinforces and substantiates her important message by interviewing theologians, lawyers, psychologists and other experts about clergy child abuse.
This film stands out from the pack of moralistic documentaries because of its compelling stories of individual victims and their families who were devasted
The film manages to deliver viewers to the point of moral outrage regarding clergy abuse—Catholic or not, it also shows how the business of saving souls can rationalize the obscenity of selling them.
English w/Spanish subtitles.