God's abused servants

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Movie
German title God's abused servants
Original title Religious abusées, l'autre scandale de l'Église
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2019
length 97 minutes
Rod
Director Eric Quintin ,
Marie-Pierre Raimbault
occupation

Doris Wagner

God's Abused Servants is a French documentary directed by Eric Quintin and Marie-Pierre Raimbault in collaboration with Elizabeth Drevillon . The film, which was shown on Arte for the first time on March 5, 2019 , deals with sexual violence by clerics against nuns and the attempts of the Catholic Church to cover up these acts.

content

The film shows that nuns all over the world have been and are sexually abused by clerics who are hierarchically above them. The case of Marie-Dominique Philippe , who raped nuns for decades without the Church intervening, plays a central role .

The systematic rapes extend to structures in which religious sisters were sold to priests like sex slaves.

In 2018 the Vatican admitted that the reports were well founded and that the problem persisted.

The filmmakers tried to arrange a meeting of two protagonists of the film with Pope Francis . Since the Vatican only offered a private audience without witnesses, the women concerned refused this meeting.

backgrounds

The film is based on two years of research.

Doris Wagner , one of the affected (former) nuns who have a say in the film, has already drawn attention to the problem of sexual violence against religious sisters , for example in her autobiographical book No More Me - the true story of a young religious woman or with an article in of the catholic cultural magazine Voices of the Time . She was also seen in the film #Female Pleasure . Her second book, Spiritual Abuse in the Catholic Church , was published in 2019 .

In the 1990s, several nuns had already responded to the widespread sexual abuse in u. a. African monasteries, including Maura O'Donohue , who sent a report to Rome in 1994 on cases in 23 countries. This report did not come to the public until 2001 through the National Catholic Reporter . Only then was there a statement from Rome in which these cases were confirmed, but despite the many documented cases from different countries, the problem was relativized as "in a limited geographical area". Later that year, then Pope John Paul II issued a message to apologize to the victims.

In a survey of 578 nuns in the US in the 1990s, 39.9 percent of those surveyed said they had experienced sexual abuse, 29.3 percent had been sexually abused while they were part of the respective community.

The authors of the film state: “In addition to pedophilia , the church is trying to cover up another crime. All over the world, priests commit sexual abuse of women religious who are subject to their authority. "Doris Wagner also writes:" That church institutions are obviously aware of the seriousness of internal incidents, but on the other hand hardly take any other measures than to keep them as far away from the public as possible Phenomenon that we already made sad acquaintance with in the child abuse cases. ”When asked how is it possible that religious women could be victims of sexual abuse in such a high number, she speaks among others. a. the balance of power between superiors or priests and sisters as well as celibacy , dealing with perpetrators and the question of the position of women religious in the church's power structure.

Interim disposal

On March 20, 2019, a court issued an injunction prohibiting the broadcaster Arte from continuing to present the film in its media library, whereupon it was removed. On the other hand, Arte goes to court. The spokesman for the spiritual family “Das Werk” in Bregenz , Father Georg Gantioler , told the Catholic News Agency that a lawyer from the community had obtained an injunction against Arte TV, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Deutschlandfunk .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ God's abused servants. In: programm.ard.de. RBB , accessed March 17, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Doris Wagner: #NunsToo. Sexual abuse of women religious. Facts and questions. In: Voices of the Time . 143, 2018, pp. 374-384.
  3. ↑ Chris Hedges: Documents Allege Abuse of Nuns by Priests. In: The New York Times . March 21, 2001.
  4. ↑ Sexual abuse ( Memento from May 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) on we-are-church.org
  5. ↑ Copy of the preliminary injunction as pdf.
  6. ↑ Benjamin Emonts: Arte removes abuse documentary from the program , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung from April 23, 2019.
  7. ↑ Spiritual abuse "I fit into the booty scheme" , in: Deutschlandfunk from January 28, 2019.
  8. ↑ Catholic community "Das Werk" had the abuse film blocked , on kathisch.de on April 27, 2019.