Vows of Silence

Going deep behind the headlines about scandals in the Catholic Church, Jason Berry and Gerald Renner follow the staggering trail of evasions and deceit that leads directly to the Vatican and taints the legacy of Pope John Paul II.

Based on more than six years of investigative reporting and hundreds of interviews, Vows of Silence is a riveting account of Vatican cover-ups. Both a profound criticism and a wake-up call to reform by two Catholic writers, this book reveals an agenda of top-down control under John Paul II and a hierarchy so obsessed with secrecy as to spawn disinformation.

Vows of Silence cuts between the life story of Father Tom Doyle, who sacrificed a diplomatic career with the Vatican to seek justice for sex-abuse victims, and Father Marcial Maciel, an accused pedophile and founder of the militaristic religious order, the Legion of Christ. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Father Doyle and with ex-Legionaries who filed a canonical suit against Maciel, as well as interviews with Vatican insiders and an array of sources in Mexico, Ireland, Canada, and Australia, Berry and Renner provide a penetrating account of a hierarchy directly in conflict with its followers.

With keen insight and scrupulous reporting, Vows of Silence is a powerful narrative that chronicles the church's struggle between orthodoxy and reform—going straight to the heart of one of the world's largest power structures. It is not a book about sexual abuse; it is a book about abuse of power throughout the Vatican.