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	"Evil" Delivers Haunting Portrait of Pedophile Priest By Sheri Linden Metro June 29, 2006 http://www.metronews.ca/reuters_entertainment.asp?id=158949 Los Angeles (Hollywood Reporter) - Oliver O'Grady was the kind of twinkly-eyed priest whose adoring California parishioners called him Father Ollie. They trusted him implicitly with their children, which made it easier for him to molest hundreds of girls and boys, one as young as 9 months, over 20-odd years. With an immediacy and intimacy that news reports can't provide, this deeply affecting documentary explores the pedophile crisis that has shaken the edifice of the Catholic Church. Debuting director Amy Berg tells the story of O'Grady and three of his victims with powerful restraint, amassing damning testimony against the Church's decades-long cover-up of complaints and "incidents." "Deliver Us From Evil" is a haunting portrait of a profoundly benighted man, the lives he shattered and the institution that repeatedly protected him -- and itself -- at the cost of children's safety. Imminent theatrical pickup is likely for this important and unforgettable chronicle, which received its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival. One of the more remarkable and troubling elements of "Evil" is the cooperation of O'Grady, who appears in several extended interviews, delivering what he hopes will be "the most honest confession of my life." But his openness is more clinical than soul-searching, and it's chillingly evident that, whatever counseling he has received over the years -- while his superiors shuffled him from one central California congregation to another -- he is still a man in the grip of pathological delusion. Speaking of his abuses, he uses such euphemisms as "the people I offended" and "I became overly affectionate," and, though he talks the penance talk, he has yet to take full responsibility for his actions. Costly settlements notwithstanding, neither has the Church, which looks increasingly like a hypocritical corporate hierarchy bent on maintaining authority. In O'Grady's case, Los Angeles' Cardinal Roger Mahony emerges as a key architect of denials that smoothed the way for his own career advancement while betraying the faithful. The stories of those who were betrayed, especially the parents who invited Father Ollie into their children's lives, are heartrending. But Berg has crafted not merely a work of moral outrage but one of ideas, with historians, theologians and therapists offering insights into the politics, economics and psychology of an institution that forbids practicing homosexuals from taking communion but allows practicing child molesters to administer it. Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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