Victims Group Takes Issue with Weakland Portrayal in Abuse Film

By Annysa Johnson
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
October 6, 2012

http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/victims-turn-out-for-film-on-abuser-priest-8r74nlt-172960271.html

Dozens of clergy sex abuse survivors and their supporters turned out for Friday's sold-out U.S. premiere of "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God" at the Milwaukee Film Festival. But the leading victims advocacy group, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, takes issue with how the film, which recounts the abuse of as many as 200 deaf boys by the Milwaukee Archdiocese's late Father Lawrence Murphy, treats retired Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland.

Weakland, who is interviewed in the film, appears as a tragically flawed figure who fought the Vatican in an effort to defrock Murphy late in his life.

SNAP issued a statement on Weakland, saying, in part:

"The Pope might have been in Rome but it was Weakland who was in Milwaukee. During his entire tenure as archbishop, Weakland concealed and transferred child molesting clerics from one parish and school to another without alerting police or notifying the public. In fact, Weakland knew there were so many priests assaulting children under his supervision that, according to his 2008 deposition, he never informed parishes with offender priests assigned, or once assigned to them, because, as he put it, that would entail notifying 'nearly all' of the 300 parishes of the archdiocese and presumably, that's the only job he would be doing. Exactly."

The archdiocese has said that the film only reopens old wounds, and that it has provided information about Murphy and other abusive priests on its website for years.