Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of 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.