It's a multinational of a particular kind, one you all know.
Some of you may even visit it.
It's present across the globe and on the corner of your street.
The Catholic Church.
With its hierarchy, its communication, and its very darkest secret, pedophilia.
In Australia, 7% of priests are thought to have sexually abused minors, 4% in the
United States.
We discovered that clergymen found guilty of pedophilia are still active,
often in contact with children.
Thanks to internal documents, we'll reveal how church leaders protect priests accused
of sexually abusing minors, by sending them from country to country, notably in
Africa.
Our investigation into these international exiles took us to Cameroon, to Argentina,
to the United States, to France, and to Italy.
During our travels, we established this unprecedented map, that regarding the
transfers of priests involved in cases of pedophilia.
And the victims number tens of thousands, marked with scars for the rest of their
lives.
Our investigations would lead us all the way to Pope Francis.
We'll reveal how, when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he tried to influence the
Argentine Justice Department.
We investigated the mysteries of the church, where, on the altar of truth,
God's law seems to prevail over that of men.
Our inquiry into the international transfers of priests accused of
pedophilia, begins in the United States.
We're in Chicago, in the shadow of this cathedral, to witness a very unique kind
of protest.
All are victims of pedophile priests.
In their hands, portraits of them as children, when they were abused.
In the U.S., 16,000 people have already lodged complaints for sexual abuse against
Catholic priests.
These victims have joined forces for the annual conference of their support group,
SNAP, Survivor Network of Those Abused by Priests.
Hello,
everybody.
Great to see you again.
And I think it looks like we've got a bigger group than last year, which is even
better news.
So, how many of you are here for the first time?
That looks like 40%.
Remember that all of us here are survivors of sexual assaults and betrayals during
our youth.
So, if you're looking for an opportunity to share your experience with people who
truly get it, this is the place.
Recently, the organization has seen abuse victims from all over the world join its
ranks.
It has become the Internationale of Those Abused by the Church.
My name is Miguel, I'm 34 years old, and I'm a survivor of sexual assaults by
priests from Barcelona, Spain.
When I was 16 years old, I was abused by the Catholic priest in charge of the group
of young people I was attending.
Where are you from?
Santiago, Chile.
I'm from Germany, from Berlin.
I was sexually abused in Mexico when I was 14 years old.
I'm actually from the Philippines.
I was abused by a Jesuit for three years.
I was 15 years old.
I was abused as a teen for a long period of time.
It was with an oblate priest, his name was Jack McCann, in Vancouver, Canada.
Accounts from over 50 countries.
At the end of the conference, we talked to one of the activists, Ann Barrett-Doyle.
Thanks to reports from victims, SNAP is the only group to have been able
to establish a list of priests worldwide allegedly involved in pedophilia cases.
We only include those priests who have been accused of child sexual abuse in a
credible public document.
It has to be either a court document that's publicly accessible or a mainstream
news outlet.
She began her work 14 years ago.
In the States, these activists publish the names and photos of accused priests on the
internet, to try to ensure they never come into contact with children again.
This is just the letter A, and it just keeps going.
How many names at the end, so far?
So, all in the entire database, we have 4,400 names.
So do you have any French names in the list?
We do have several.
So Father Revoy is a very troubling case, because he abused this young boy and
Mario's Inuit boy did report the abuse, eventually within statute.
But Revoy was fled in 1993.
It somehow spirited him back to France, where he lives safely now.
That's not the case of his victim, who took his own life in December of 2012.
To avoid justice, one French priest accused of the sexual abuse of minors is
thought to have fled Canada and be hiding in France.
The story barely seems credible.
We contacted the sister of one of the priest's presumed victims.
Thérèse Tungelik speaks to us from Northern Canada, deep in Inuit territory.
Her brother, Marius Tungelik, committed suicide five years ago.
He had filed a complaint against the French priest.
She has sent us some old photos of her and her kid brother, and one of Father Revoy.
How old will be Marius today?
He will be 58 today.
Do you think what happened to him when he was a child was responsible for the abuse?
Was he responsible about why he decided to die?
Of course.
My best friend never left him.
Even though he became an adult, he could not sleep in the dark.
He was still afraid.
Do you think Marius was the only victim of Mr. Revoy?
No.
I know some more people.
He has ruined so many people's lives.
This man doesn't deserve to be free.
If we can get Revoy behind bars on Canadian soil, it will be a message to the
other priests who think they might get away with things like this.
We get our hands on the warrant issued to the Canadian police for Father Revoy's
arrest.
They've been after the priest since 1998.
On it, we discover the name of Marius, but also two other boys, made anonymous by
the police with black lines.
A girl of 14 is also among the alleged victims.
In all, the priest is thought to have abused four children.
Finally, in the top left-hand corner, a vital piece of information.
The name of the town where the priest is believed to be hiding, Goût, in France.
A small town in the Vaucluse where there's a monastery belonging to his community.
So we catch the train to Strasbourg.
That's right, because in the meantime, we've got hold of some internal documents
from his community.
Father Revoy has been transferred several times.
After Ariatte in Canada, he didn't stay in Goût as presumed by the Canadian police.
He apparently went next to Turin near Lyon, and that's where we lost track of
him.
But after several months of inquiries, during a phone call, a priest from a
prairie where Father Revoy had stayed, unwittingly gave us a new lead.
The priest, wanted by the Canadian police for 19 years for sexually abusing four
children, seemingly lives here, in Strasbourg, among his religious
community.
From now on, we'll film with a hidden camera.
Hello.
We're here to see Mr. Revoy.
Mr. Revoy?
Yes.
I'll see if he's here.
Our information was correct.
Is everyone here?
The priest is here, at the end of the corridor.
Hello, Mr. Revoy.
Hello.
Mathieu, Martin, nice to meet you.
Can we sit down for a minute?
Yes, it's dinner time.
We're journalists, and we'd like to see you, because we have people here,
in the North-West, in the Neu-Lavout.
You're not supposed to know that there are several children who have told us about
you, especially about sexual assault.
And so we wanted to have your truth on this, because it's important to have the
truth of what we're talking about.
You don't want to...
No.
You don't want to say a word?
No.
Does the name Marius Tungalik mean anything to you?
I think so, yes.
I don't remember which village it was, but...
Was it this young man?
Does it mean anything to you?
We show him the photo of the young Inuit, Marius Tungalik.
For me, they're all the same.
Oh, yes?
So, this young man, this gentleman, he committed suicide at the age of 55?
No, I didn't know.
You didn't know?
No.
He committed suicide, and in several of his emails, he talks about the sexual
assault he suffered, and he gives your name.
He says it was you who did it.
Marius, no.
Tungalik, this is you.
And this is the arrest warrant.
Do you know that you are under arrest, an arrest warrant in Canada?
No.
Did you report it to the French authorities?
No, I didn't.
So, listen, I'm stopping here.
I'm going to ask you a very simple question.
Have you ever sexually assaulted children?
I'm not answering you.
But why?
Because you're not my confessor.
But you know, sir, the truth will set you free.
Do you know this phrase from the Bible?
Yes, yes, I know it.
And is it an isolated case?
One man may have an explanation.
Back in the United States, we've arranged to meet a former American priest,
Patrick Wall.
Since the 1990s, he has been a close-up witness of pedophile scandal.
Joined the monastery as a very idealistic 20-year-old, and thought I was going to be
a monk, a priest, and unfortunately it didn't work out that way because so many
sex abuse cases came forward that I ended up actually being ordained early to go
work on and follow sex abusers who were being withdrawn.
And at that point, at the age of 32, I had to make a moral decision.
Am I going to support this institution?
You know, am I part of this?
Or do I have to find a different path?
And that's when I chose to take a different path and to help a survivor.
Since then, Patrick Wall has become a whistleblower.
An expert called on to testify in over 2,000 cases of priests accused of sexual
abuse.
According to him, the Catholic Church has developed a system to exfiltrate pedophile
priests.
That's the same pattern we've seen in Australia.
It's the same pattern we've seen in the United States.
It's the same pattern we've seen in Canada.
It's the same pattern in Ireland, in England, in Italy.
It's honestly, it's in the DNA of the Roman Catholic system.
And I like to call this the geographic solution.
So what the bishop needs to do then, he finds out that the priest is a
perpetrator.
And then at that point, he simply moves him to a different spot where the previous
scandal is not known.
And if it's not enough?
You move him outside the country.
That's the geographic solution.
You can move him from continent to continent as long as he can speak the
language that is needed.
It looks legitimate.
And so he's going to be accepted without question.
That's where the danger comes in.
An anonymous source would provide us with proof of the geographical solution
described by Patrick Wall.
One evening, we received dozens of internal documents from the community of
St. John.
500 brothers present throughout the world.
This French community is highly controversial.
It has the highest number of priests found guilty of pedophilia in recent years.
Three since 2012.
And there are thought to have been more cases of sexual abuse.
It's all there in black and white.
As we turn the pages, we get a strange feeling.
The community seems to have become a master in the art of the international
displacement of priests suspected of sexually abusing children.
Among the pile of documents from the community of St. John, one recent letter
draws our attention...
and sends us rushing to the airport.
Here's the letter, signed by a high-ranking church official, this
archbishop from Cameroon.
He wrote to the head of the community of St. John, having decided to exclude from
diocese several St. John priests.
He explained himself.
Reverend Brother, some brothers of St. John got themselves into situations of
extreme gravity.
The brothers in question were about to be hauled in front of the courts,
at a risk of dirtying the image of our church.
I used all my weight to make sure this did not happen.
What had these French priests done to incur the wrath of an archbishop?
In Cameroon, a mostly Catholic country, the community of St. John is an
institution.
The brothers run one of the biggest high schools in Yaoundé, the capital.
But in Berthoua, in the east of the country, the brothers of St. John have
left town.
Until 2014, they oversaw this cathedral, the biggest in the region.
We go to see the archbishop, the one who asked the St. John priests to leave.
Monseigneur Atanga, one of the African representatives of the Vatican.
The brothers in question were about to be hauled in front of the courts,
at a risk of dirtying the image of our church.
I used all my weight to make sure this did not happen.
Did you try to hide the facts so that the image of the church would not be dirty?
No, no, no.
I never hide the facts.
You didn't hide anything.
I don't hide anything.
But what does it mean when you say that they were about to be hauled in front of
the courts...
You should not comment on this letter.
And this letter should not be here.
We try to dig deeper, but...
No, no, no.
I don't comment on the letter.
I didn't say anything about it.
No, no, no.
I don't comment on it.
That's why I said I didn't comment on it.
I'm sorry, but that's how it is.
So, no comment?
No comment.
And you shouldn't have this letter.
I shouldn't have this letter?
Yes, thanks for your precious comments, Your Grace.
But they weren't exactly helpful.
At the Cathedral of Batuah, we'll discover the reasons why the St. John Brothers
hurriedly left town.
Another alleged case of pedophilia.
The sexual abuse of a number of boys.
For three days, we try to find these presumed victims.
In this city, where the Catholic Church is omnipresent, it's hard to broach the
subject.
Finally, we find one of the kids who was supposedly abused by the priest.
Today, he's 15.
If there was a pact with God, it would be in the name of God.
If the men of God are like this, it would be good.
I say, well, there's no problem.
We show him one of the community's internal documents that we managed to
procure.
The mugshots of all the St. John Brothers across the globe.
508 in all.
This priest had indeed been posted in Batuah.
How many times?
A pact of silence?
Yes.
After a few weeks, the boy finally admitted everything to his parents.
They immediately went together to the Batuah law courts to file a complaint.
But here, nobody touches the church.
In Batuah, the justice of men seems to serve men of God.
We have an appointment with a civil servant inside the Ministry of Justice.
We film discreetly.
She confirms the closeness between the church and one of the top judges.
So when the case exploded, the magistrate of the court did everything to act
discreetly.
The civil servant gives us an excerpt from the victim's testimony.
The name of Fr.
Emmanuel appears nowhere.
Instead, he is merely designated as Le Prêtre, the priest.
Before leaving Batuah, we meet another presumed victim.
He too picks out Fr.
Emmanuel from the mugshots.
Where is Fr.
Emmanuel now, the French priest accused of sexually abusing at least two boys?
Among the community's internal documents are the postings made in 2016.
Since being expelled from Batuah in Cameroon, Fr.
Emmanuel appears to be in Bologna, in Italy.
We wait for the father outside the priory.
After a few hours, he finally shows up.
We film discreetly.
I wanted to know what you thought about the rape.
Is it really the case?
Do you recognize these facts or not?
By the bishop on the spot?
For what purpose?
So he asked young people to lie...
So it's a plot?
He used that to...
How do you explain this letter?
From the Archdiocese of Batuah, from Atanga, Joseph Atanga, the famous
archbishop.
The brothers who were being questioned were about to be dragged in front of the
courts, at the risk of ending their lives.
On the spot.
I weighed all my weight so that we wouldn't get there.
How can this archbishop, on the one hand, accuse you, and on the other hand,
weigh all his weight on local justice so that you don't get expelled?
It's quite subtle.
Very subtle indeed.
Children are manipulated by the archbishop.
But Father Emmanuel offers another explanation.
Have you been questioned by the French justice or the French police?
Are you subject to a canonical trial or not at all?
No.
There is no... nothing.
Nothing happened.
According to Father Emmanuel, nothing happened.
But why then was he shipped out of Cameroon, when he could have been posted
to another diocese in the country?
In Boulogne, his new superior explains.
He doesn't know we're filming.
We could look at the preventive measures in case...
He is in a situation where, in any case, de facto, it's a shelter, you see.
So the community of Saint John shipped Father Emmanuel off to Boulogne so he
wouldn't be anywhere near any kids.
But when we leave the priory, two posters catch our eye.
Teatro San Salvatore and Teatro, a theatre inside the priory.
It's then that the penny drops.
The community of Saint John is there, at the address number 1.
And right there is Teatro San Salvatore, which specializes in the wake-up theatre
for children aged 6 to 10, 11 to 13, and 14 to 18.
When he tells us that he has nothing to do with children, maybe not in the church,
but at the same address, in the same priory, in the same corridors,
there are children passing by.
When we arrived at Saint John, we had a few questions for the head of the
community.
On the case in Bertoa and Cameroon, but also on the other documents in our
hands.
The Saint John Public Relations Director emailed us.
Dear Sir, We are prudent about the televised press, especially when sensitive
subjects are concerned.
After long reflection, we prefer to decline your request for an interview.
Regarding the departure of the brothers from the cathedral in Bertoa, we had every
reason to believe that these rumors were ungrounded, the same conclusion that the
local police and justice obviously reached, because they pressed no charges
after their investigation.
I send you cordial greetings and my prayers.
Not exactly a satisfactory reply.
So, we check up on the schedule of the head of the community of Saint John.
He is due to fly to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia today from the Charles de Gaulle
airport outside Paris.
We wait for brother Thomas Joachim with a sign to grab his attention.
And it works.
Yes, yes, we wrote to you.
No, no, no, I wrote to you to explain why I would not do an interview directly like
that.
Why?
We gave you the answers in writing.
We gave you the answers in writing, so I think that's enough.
And we explained to you why we didn't want to do an interview like that.
And why don't you want to do an interview like that?
I already explained it to you.
No, but tell me, I'm interested.
No, no, but I wanted to explain and talk.
I would like to ask you questions on the issue of sexual abuse on minors by members
of the community of Saint John.
There are accusations against some of your members in Cameroon, in Berthois.
I have documents here that attest it.
I also have others on which I would also like to have your opinion.
In particular, this is a document from your home, which speaks of a brother who
says that there have been incompatible contacts with girls.
People have been upset in their faith.
Here, it's another brother who says that there is no follow-up in these camps.
I think it's important to know your answers on this.
Of course, it's important.
Can we have an interview on the long term with you?
No, I already explained to you in writing why.
Here, we have one of your brothers who speaks of sexual abuse.
For each of these cases, have you sent a report to the police?
Despite our frequent requests, the community of Saint John refused to
grant us an interview.
During our investigation, we discovered other examples of the international
transfer of priests accused of pedophilia.
We could have chosen to tell you about this priest from Lyon, who after being
accused of sexual abuse by one young teenager, was moved to Guinea.
Or this one, with an international arrest warrant for sexually abusing children in
France hanging over his head, now in refuge in Lebanon.
Or this one, an Italian, wanted for sexually abusing eight boys, transferred
to Mozambique.
At the heart of the Catholic Church, how many cases are there of priests moved
from country to country due to suspicions of sexual abuse on minors?
We tried to add them up.
Over three months, we contacted the main victims' groups around the world.
Each gave us their list of transferred priests.
Then we called whistleblowers, attorneys,
judges, and all cross-checked with local newspaper articles.
We only took into account priests moved since 1990.
There were so many cases, we had to see this on the big screen.
So we booked the biggest panoramic movie theater in Paris.
We compiled all of the data onto a map.
To discover it with us is Fr.
Joulin.
A French clergyman with a unique profile.
He's both a priest and a therapist.
He sees sexual abuse victims, but also the priests accused of it.
That's right, and he's the only French man of the cloth to accept our invitation.
A film by Fr.
Joulin Did you expect so many movements on this map, and so many priests moved or
mutated because of pedophilia?
So many movements, and so many priests mutated...
No, not at all.
It seemed to me to be something from another age, that was happening a century
ago, but that we had kind of let go.
But it doesn't seem to be the case at all.
No, not at all.
Since 1990, we have counted 95 mutations, in quotes, of priests involved in
pedophilia cases.
And yet, we are very far from having access to all the data.
In all, they would have abused 802 victims.
So this figure is also important, very important.
Yes, absolutely.
802 victims could have been avoided.
We have the feeling of dealing with a system of exfiltration of pedophile
priests or suspected of being.
There is a dynamic that is that of moving away.
But here, we are downright in other countries, in other continents.
And there is still this notion, if these people have been recognized as
being pedophiles or being perpetrators of sexual abuse in the countries where they
are from, sending them abroad is completely irresponsible, it is criminal.
So, we are going to talk about very specific cases that we discovered during
this investigation.
The father's case, Nicolas, we are going to discover it together.
Accused of raping deaf children in the 1980s in Italy.
He was never judged, but he was transferred to Argentina where he was
recently arrested for absolutely similar acts.
This time, it was in Mendoza.
It is irresponsible.
They are aware of this problem.
And certainly not by putting him back in a frame where he will be able to repeat the
same crimes he committed in Italy.
What should the Church have done?
There is power in the canonical law to do something, to make this man be removed
from the priesthood.
You are part of the white fathers, the missionaries of Africa.
You will notice that the suspected pedophilia priests have often been
mutated, moved to Africa.
You also say, in South America, mission areas.
And I imagine that somehow it hurts you.
There is still this idea that someone who has been a predator for children,
finally, if he goes to Africa or if he goes to Latin America, it does not matter.
For the children there.
Do you feel shocked?
Yes, yes.
But yes, it is no longer acceptable today.
It's irresponsible, it's immature, it's all we want.
And I think that there is also somewhere, among many evictions or others,
such a disconnection with everything that affects sexuality, humans, others,
that they are not able to feel what can be the violence of a sexual abuse on a child.
The person I accompanied, who told me the latest thing, she had been abused at the
age of 7, she told me at the age of 87.
80 years later, it taught her to be able to dare to speak on these facts.
Because for the Church, the victim is the troublemaker.
It is the one by whom the scandal comes.
There is a deep fear of the scandal.
And so, these victims are children of God.
It's not...
They are not sub-children of God.
They are not sub-children of God, they are not a sub-category.
So, forgiveness would be good for those who have been abused, but mercy not for
the victims.
But what is that?
As a system.
It is a perverse system.
And it is this system that must be changed.
When I told you about the fight, this is where the fight must take place.
As you can imagine, after this interview, our attention turned to the Vatican,
the Holy See, the place where the Church's laws are made.
The place where punishments against pedophile priests are meted out.
But we discovered that even inside the Vatican government, high-ranking officials
have been accused of covering for priests accused of pedophilia.
After several months of discussion, the Vatican chose this priest to answer
our question.
Father Zollner, an advisor to the Pope on sexual abuse issues.
He also sits on the Commission for the Protection of Minors, a body founded by
Pope Francis two years ago.
You have been appointed to this commission.
What has the commission done since then, and do you think it is enough?
We have people from all continents on this commission.
We have experts from different fields, so psychology, psychiatry, law,
international law, social work and theology.
And we try to discuss what can be next steps to help the Pope to set up new
measures to be more incisive in the life of local churches.
And there is still a lot to do, no?
My expression for this is, this is a generational task.
We will not finish within two years or five years.
We will have to work long term, which means 15, 20, maybe 30 years.
I wanted to show you something.
These are the ten cardinals that are usually considered the most powerful of
the Vatican.
This is the C9, right?
It's an advisory board.
Okay, and here, Gerd Müller, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine and the
Faith.
Among these ten cardinals, four are accused of having covered up pedophile
priests.
You know that, of course.
Sure.
I have no particular knowledge about any of them.
You just said to me that you knew it.
I know that there are allegations, but I don't know what is the background of
these cases.
I am not an investigator.
You want me to be more precise?
Sure.
Okay, George Bell, so he's here in Australia.
A few months ago, in front of the Australian Royal Commission on Sexual
Abuses within the church, he recognized knowing sexual abusers from Australian
priests, but did not denounce them to justice.
So what do you think of him being in the C9 with that story?
I have been to Australia last year.
I have traveled.
I have been in the diocese.
I met with three survivors from the school where Cardinal Pell was at that time,
the vice director of the school.
And Cardinal Pell will engage to cooperate with justice and to cooperate in the sense
of setting up safeguarding measures.
Sure, but when you say he will, this is future.
Yeah, sure.
But he didn't denounce sexual abusers before and he's in the C9.
He admitted that.
Is it shocking for you or not?
Of course it is shocking, yeah.
For him to be in the C9 and not denouncing sexual abusers and minors?
Yeah, sure.
Francisco Errazuriz in Chile, here.
Documents have shown that Errazuriz has waited five years after the first victim
spoke out to take action and to remove the priest, Father Karadima.
And Father Karadima has been since proven guilty by the Vatican of sexual abuses.
He's here, still in the C9.
Yeah, I'm not responsible for the appointments in the C9.
No, but what do you think of it?
I'm not the one who decides on that.
But what do you think?
I think they will stay as long as the Pope wants them there.
Thank you very much.
It seems then that only the Pope has the power to punish his cardinals.
So why doesn't he take stronger action?
Maybe because he, too, faced accusations in his homeland of Argentina long before
his election.
When he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he apparently tried to have a pedophile
priest acquitted.
To understand, we took one last flight.
In our baggage, this book of interviews with the Pope.
On page 64, the Pope tackles the question of pedophile priests.
He writes, It never happened in my diocese.
On the Holy Father's word.
But is it the truth?
In Buenos Aires, along with God, or rather Diego Maradona, the Pope is a
star.
His face is everywhere.
And yet, some refuse to share in this iconographic cult.
In the city centre, we have arranged to meet a group of victims.
They were abused by priests in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires.
They alerted Pope Francis when he was their Archbishop.
It never happened in my diocese.
He never wants to admit it.
It's a lie.
Who tried to contact Bergoglio?
Who tried?
All of us.
And who got a response?
No one.
To all the famous people in the world, Leonardo DiCaprio also went to show them
the Oscar.
To all of them, he opens the doors.
And they don't even send us a card to say, I'm very sorry.
I don't expect anything.
I don't believe anything.
And I suffered a lot.
The disappointment.
And it hurt me a lot that Bergoglio didn't do anything.
And everyone told me to write to him because he was going to answer me.
And I suffered, I suffered.
I suffered a lot.
And I'm very disappointed.
That's it.
As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis was seemingly deaf to the
distress of these victims.
But apparently it's worse.
In another case concerning other victims, some believe he willfully tried to divert
the course of justice.
It's the Father Graci case.
The biggest pedophilia scandal in the Argentinian church.
Julio Cesar Graci was one of the best known priests in the country.
Very influential.
And often in the media spotlight.
He ran a huge orphanage.
Until some of the children there lodged a complaint against him for sexual abuse.
In 2009 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Still today he's behind bars.
But the Argentinian church did all in its power to have him acquitted.
Juan Pablo Gallego represented Father Graci's child victims.
A trial spread over 15 years.
And opposite him, the most renowned attorneys in the land, but also the
Catholic church.
Don't be fooled by the cover which makes you think it's a book.
This 2800 page counter-inquiry is a confidential, internal Argentinian church
legal text.
Inside the children are accused of falsifications, lies, deceit and
invention.
Even their own sexual orientation is questioned.
The conclusion is clear.
The court's decision was wrong.
Father Graci had to be acquitted on appeal.
But one paragraph caught our eye.
This work was commissioned in 2010 by the Argentine Episcopal Conference and notably
by its then president, Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis.
So the Pope did commission a counter-inquiry to try to have a priest
who had been sentenced for pedophilia acquitted.
And it's said that Jose Bergoglio, the future Pope, actually sent it to the
judges.
With a shrewd sense of timing, before Father Graci's various appeal
hearings.
One of the magistrates who received a copy of the counter-inquiry agreed to meet us.
Carlos Mariques, a former appeal court judge and former minister of justice,
is today a high court judge.
It's the first time he's spoken openly about the Graci case.
He remembers very well the day he found this counter-inquiry on his desk.
He has a very partial view of other cases.
He has a clear intention in favor of Father Graci.
Because he wanted to exert a subtle pressure on the judges.
A way of influencing.
Absolutely.
Okay.
Yes.
Subtle, but...
But finally useless.
Father Graci's sentence was upheld at both the appeals court and high court.
At the center of the counter-inquiry commissioned by the Pope when he was
Archbishop of Buenos Aires, is the account of a boy, an orphan, the main victim of
Graci.
Since the case blew up in the early 2000s, it's the first time he's agreed to talk to
a reporter.
He wants to remain anonymous, because he's still afraid of reprisals.
I received a threat, and here's the threat.
It's tangible.
There's a witness, there's this, there's this evidence.
They broke my house, they broke the lock on my house.
They took things, personal things, videotapes or things like that,
that I had, that were things that were for Graci.
What justice decided was that, for me to be safe, for me to be safe,
that I enter the program of a protected witness.
What do you think of these books?
There's only one thing I believe in Graci, it's that sentence.
Bergoglio never let go of my hand.
And I didn't hear if Francisco is still giving him his hand or not, but I didn't
hear the opposite of the Church either.
So I stay with the part that I believe in Graci, that he never let go of his hand.
The Pope has never publicly commented on the Graci case.
For eight months we tried to get an interview with the Holy Father.
Dozens of requests, all refused.
So at the Vatican, we tried to meet His Holiness.
He wants to hold a public audience on St. Peter's Square.
To get anywhere near him, you need to be up very early, and to slip into the long
line of the faithful.
The door is open.
Like at a concert, you have to sprint to the front to get the best places.
Mission accomplished.
We're in the front row.
We split up.
One part of the crew filmed from the Vatican Terrace.
We want to give Pope Francis a letter with all our questions on his supposed role in
the attempt to divert the course of justice in Argentina.
Thousands of people have gathered.
We'll need a miracle to get to talk to the Pope.
A few hours later, the Popemobile arrives.
The third time it passes, we shout.
We manage to give him our letter.
And then, a few minutes later...
In the case of Gracia, the attempt to divert the course of justice in
Argentina...
His Holiness, in the case of Gracia, the attempt to divert the course of
justice in Argentina...
Why did you ask for this study in the case of Gracia?
For nothing.
For nothing?
Despite our quick chat, neither Pope Francis nor any Vatican official has ever
answered our letter.
At the end of this investigation, there's one question.
How can the Catholic Church retrieve itself from these guilty silences?
Clergymen from a number of countries, such as Belgium, the United States,
and the Netherlands, are mobilizing and launching national inquiry commissions on
sexual abuse within the Church.
All victims are listened to, and the spotlight has fallen on the responsibility
of the bishops.
So let us pray.
May the Vatican order a worldwide inquiry commission, so that past scars may be
healed, and we may still have faith in the future.
To be continued...