Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God

Time Out“A wolf entrusted with the care of lambs...” You realise how incredibly powerful and beautiful sign language can be. There’s a sign – putting one clenched fist in front of the other over your mouth – that expresses forced silence or powerlessness. It speaks a thousand words...

Evening Standard“Disturbing, often surreal and frequently moving...” This is an intimate portrait of a vast institution. Via Terry, Gary, Arthur and Pat, Gibney’s film shows the delight — rapture, even — that comes with holding the powerful to account. It also suggests that the Catholic Church is a sinking ship.

The Observer“It's a lucid film everyone should see and the Vatican should answer for...” Oscar-winning documentarist Alex Gibney's new film is a conspiracy thriller far more exciting and sinister than Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which it closely resembles, and all the better for being true...

Financial Times“A must-see for everyone...” This film, brilliantly structured, opens out from a prologue examining one man and one institution – a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, church school for the deaf whose now grown-up victims wage a campaign of testimony...

Radio Times“Only the victims emerge with any credit in Gibney's harrowing exposé...” The evidence he presents is persuasive and is backed up by plenty of compelling first-hand testimony, but the melodramatic methods employed to reconstruct Murphy's predatory nocturnal prowling are badly misjudged and distract from...

The Telegraph“The film shocks you to the marrow, and every frame burns...” Mea Maxima Culpa maps a globe-encircling web of conspiracies and concealments, stemming from a decision taken by the Vatican in the 19th century to deal with its already-endemic sex abuse problem internally, and not in collaboration with police...

The Independent“There could be no surer prompt to Christian remorse...” By a freak of timing, this documentary on abuses in the Catholic Church ends up indicting one Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later to become – and this week resign as – Benedict XVI...

Guardian“Joseph Ratzinger stands accused of knowing everything and doing nothing...” Gibney's sober, sure-footed documentary claims that the issue is widespread, bordering on the endemic, and that the church holds records of abuse within the priesthood that date right back to the fourth century...

Empire“A horrifying story, boldly told... ” That it’s uncomfortable, unpleasant and infuriating is only a reflection of how superbly Alex Gibney has constructed his documentary about child abuse in the Catholic Church and the lack of action to stop it...

Little White Lies“An exquisitely controlled, gripping journey through known history...” An examination of the Catholic Church’s policy of denial in the face of numerous child abuse scandals and its subsequent path of defending itself at the cost of its own values...