UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Sam Wollaston
The Guardian, Tuesday 25 March 2014
…
Secrets of the Vatican (Channel 4) are more sinister ones. When a puff of white smoke signalled that the reforming Pope Francis had been chosen last year it was barely discernable through the black cloud that hung heavily over the Vatican. A cloud of paedophilia and child abuse, corruption, lying and cheating, financial scandal, cover-ups and hypocrisy: the cloud that saw the eventual resignation of Pope Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI, the first pope to do so for 600 years.
This documentary isn’t really breaking anything new. But still, presented and packaged like this, with firsthand testimony – from insiders, victims, investigative journalists and police – it paints an extraordinary and damning picture of a rotten institution. Basically it’s The Borgias, Neil Jordan’s drama series with Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander, only in the 21st century and all real. The Church of the Poisoned Mind by Culture Club, if we’re still playing suitable soundtracks … We’re not? OK, and I’m giving away my enormous age.
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