2 trips
to Vatican since 2002
Still no communication with
Pope
So Birmingham victim makes documentary
 |
| Basta. Bernie and guard |
In a memorable segment of the film, Basta, Bernie McDaid tries to deliver a letter to
a Vatican office. Dozens of other people enter as the Guards nod them in, but Bernie is left gesturing and pointing to papers in his
hands. The caption reads “for 45 minutes, while negotiating, Bernie watches as
people simply walk in.” On screen the guards
look like Punch and Judy dolls as they keep blocking Bernie from entering the building.
"Basta! No Pity, No Shame, No Silence" documents years of Vatican
runaround experienced by two survivors of pedophile priest Joseph Birmingham of Boston trying to communicate with The Vatican about the extent of the pedophile priest crisis. The film covers two trips to
Rome in their effort to talk to a Pope.
“At the second screening a
survivor in his fifties stood up, talked about his life briefly, then mentioned
for the first time in public that he was a survivor,” said Gary Bergeron who
put together the film. “I still meet Birmingham
survivors who I knew personally who I didn't know were Birmingham survivors,
they had never come forward before.”
“And we're just talking about one
priest.”
After realizing there were dozens
of other victims of Birmingham, then hundreds of victims of other priests in
Boston, Bergeron and McDaid made their first trip to Rome, documented almost by accident on footage then used in the film. By 2010 the world knew that around the United
States there were tens of thousands of victims of thousands of priests, so
McDaid and Bergeron went again to the Vatican.
Both times all they wanted was to talk to the Pope or someone close to
him about the crisis.
Both times were met with arrogant disinterest.
So in 2013 Bergeron started
going to his local cable public access station and taught himself editing, for which
he shows real talent in this first documentary.
“I was at that facility from February until August five to six days a
week, full time, 10 to 7 during the week, Saturdays half days.”
The result is “Basta, No Pity,
No Shame, No Silence,” which portrays the frustration of these two pedophile
priest victims experienced trying to communicate with Catholic hierarchy, which
many others of us will be able to identify.
Bergeron used an inherent storytelling skill and produced a DVD that
makes me want to watch it over and over again, if for nothing else just to look
at the faces.
In the film, in the first 30
seconds we catch a cardinal in a lie. Footage
shows Roger Mahony of L.A. saying, “This handful of priests that we had to deal
with wouldn't fill up half of one of those pews.” Then Gary uses a graphic to
type out the fact that 508 priests were identified in L.A. alone during the one
year window in the SOL for lawsuits in California in 2003.
Right off the bat in the film we
catch a cardinal in a lie.
Cardinal Ratzinger wouldn't see
them
Bergeron’s voiceover on the
film says,
“A form letter from Cardinal Ratzinger
said they were aware of the situation and they were doing everything that they
could. It's irony to me that one of the men who wouldn't see us, Cardinal
Ratzinger, would be the next pope. We
had no idea."
As we lead up to the scene where
McDaid can’t get past the guards, we see Bernie on the phone over and over
again calling and calling, on pay phones and emailing from a local computer
café, to set up a meeting.
We see Gary trying to send a
fax: “This is about the tenth time
they've given me the wrong number.”
Bernie: “It was that brother
guy. No wonder you can’t meet the pope,
he's completely hidden.”
Then we see the Swiss Guard in
their colorful garb keep blocking Bernie McDaid from entering at the same time
as they're nodding and waving the tourists and any others to go on and enter.
-----------------
One part of the pedophile
priest phenomenon that fascinates me is the similarity in how the experience affected
the victims. Gary Bergeron says at the beginning
of his film Basta:
“At 39 I realized that I had
moved 22 times in 21 years,”
( Me: I just moved the fourth
time in three years and am anchoring myself down with heavy furniture to keep from
moving again right now in 2014 )
Bergeron continues: “Running. Running
to find something or running to hide from something.”
------------------
Back to 2002, trying to get in
to a Vatican office building.
DIALOGUE FROM THE FILM:
Gary: The Vatican Press agent is saying they're
unaware that we're here. That's after
they've been notified by the U.S. Embassy.
Bernie: And we're here every
day.
Gary: Every day, five six times we've been at that
door.
Then we cut to Gary in
what appears to be news clip from 2002
“So he could see my face,
remember my face.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
From Gary in a sit down
interview that is woven through the film.
“If the average person sitting
in the pew took the time to read the documents that I've read, they’d be taking
the churches down brick by brick.
Because we're not talking about a child accusing a priest, we're talking
about a child accusing a priest, a priest being brought in, and admitting it on
paper. They first knew about Joe
Birmingham in 1962, the year I was born, and they had opportunity after
opportunity to change course and they didn't.
And it affected my life and it affected hundreds of lives.”
-----------------------------------
SIDE TRIP:
FACES
There it is again, the survivor face, that thing I see on each of us in news clips and in person interviews.
 |
| McDaid |
 |
| McDaid |
It's almost gotten to the point where the face is a way to tell if a person is telling the truth about being molested by a pedophile priest; if they are telling the truth, they will have The Face.
 |
| Bergeron |
 |
| Bergeron |
The pedophile priest survivor face has got tears entrenched in every line, every expression exposes held back emotion, even if just for an instant. The survivor face, even when smiling, has a sadness underneath because the damage is so internal. It wasn’t just child molestation, tack on the extra fact that the perpetrator was religious. The result is this quizzical dichotomy of emotions on each of our faces. Happy, joyous to still be alive, but forever that thing inside shining its sad light.
Oh my god I am going on and on, back to the video.
-------------------------------------------------
Bergeron in film clip: “I had
the opportunity to meet with Cardinal Law in July,” Bergeron says in the film. “For my own reasons I needed to face him.”
(Again. Faces)
“I asked him to do the right
thing. I had met with him five or six
times over the summer whenever I had the opportunity, So he could see my face, remember my face,
(Again. Faces)
“And remember there are
fifty-four other men behind me. This has
gotten so enormous, this has affected so many lives. My family is still in pain
and the church is still letting lawyers do the talking. They still don't get
it.”
Then Bergeron and McDaid are
off to Rome, the first time, no appointment, just faith, says the voice over.
Bernie: “Anything is possible
here.”
---------------
FROM INTERVIEW W/ BERGERON
summer 2013
CofA: How did you get the footage from the trip to Rome
the first time? It looks like real news
footage, were you planning the documentary that far back?
Gary B: There was a
Birmingham survivor who worked for a major New York magazine. He’s a John Doe
who heard we were going in 2002 and asked to come and have a camera follow him,
because at some point he knew he’d want it.
So when we landed in Rome the second day, we hired one camera guy from
Italy, and it was all shot shotgun style, one camera following us around, no
sound crew.
For footage of the second trip
to The Vatican in 2010:
Gary B: I hadn’t seen that footage
until a year ago. I reached out to all
the news agencies who had covered our second trip, and most had taped over it. But there was one reporter from a Swiss television station, a French reporter, and she still had all her raw footage.
In the sit-down interview on
film, Bergeron says about attempts to sit down with the Pope and talk:
GARY: Our goal was to open up dialogue with the
Vatican. You don't have to agree with
someone, you don't have to like someone, to sit across the table and have a
conversation. The reality is, every
conflict that society has ever had eventually got resolved through a
conversation. Whether it was Gorbachev
and Reagan, whether it was Kennedy and Khrushchev, it was dialogue that got the
problem solved. And we've been trying to
engage them in dialogue for the better part of ten years.”
--------------------
On that first trip to The
Vatican, they do finally end up meeting with Monsignor Green for about ninety
minutes. They talked about the impact
this had had on the families.
GARY in SITDOWN INTERVIEW IN BASTA
“The problem has always been
one thing, honesty.
“If they had told us the truth
from the beginning, we could have dealt with it. If somebody had told us the truth this week,
we could have dealt with it. But the
fact is we knocked on door after door after door, we had meeting after meeting
after meeting and got nowhere until last night.
Did we meet the Pope, no, but I told them last night that we would be
back.”
Gary’s message to the Pope was
that the Bishops in the United States were not doing their jobs.
As if The Pope didn't
know.
“The mistreatment was so
massive and so prolonged that it bordered on the unbelievable. They were in effect sacrificing children to
protect their reputation.”
- Massachusetts Attorney
General Thomas Reilly, in the Grand Jury Report, quoted in Basta after they
return from Rome… the first time.
Bergeron and McDaid came back from the first trip to Rome and the Massachusetts Attorney General Report came out, sparking them to do more. The film includes incredibly emotional scenes from 2010 when they meet up with survivors in Europe and hold a candlelight ceremony.
“After Rome I was going to come
home and get back to normal life. But
there really was no normal for me,” says the voiceover, and then continues:
“It was shocking to me that we
had passed two election cycles and yet thousands of survivors had spoken
publicly, and we hadn’t had one politician, one senator, one congressman, stand
up and take on the issue of Catholic clergy abuse.”
In the United States according to archdiocese internal numbers, and internal audits, the number of predator priests identified is just shy of seven thousand
(Note, I emailed bishop accountability about most current numbers and Anne Barett Doyle emailed back:)
"The current cumulative total of accused clerics acknowledged by US bishops is more than 6,400."
On the film, a graphic states there are 714,455 children who are now adult survivors of Catholic pedophile priest crimes in the USA.
(So why do I still feel so
alone?)
To find out more about Basta,
buy the DVD here:
---------------
Raw Notes
from Fall 2013
Bergeron Interview:
(I interviewed Gary after
watching the film and here is what he said:)
At each screening someone has come
forward whose family or friends had committed suicide and nobody put the pieces
together until this story broke in Boston.
I still meet Birmingham
survivors who I knew personally who I didn't know were Birmingham survivors,
they “had never come forward before.
At the second screening a
survivor stood up and talked about his life briefly and then mentioned he was a
survivor and it was the first time he had ever spoken.
He was in his fifties.
For me it was validation in
wanting to get the story out, because I really want to get the story out for a
couple of reasons but mainly to educate the public
To help understand what it was
like twelve years ago
For survivors to understand
they're not alone.
Stressing it's never too late
to make a change if change is necessary.
On teaching himself editing
It's called Lowell Public
Access Station. I became a member. They
have full production and editing facilities and I self-taught the programs I
needed to do the production work, that needed to be done.
I taught myself how to do
it.
I started in February 2013
I had been working on the
video, thinking about getting it done for quite a while, but to do a quality
production piece it's extremely expensive.
Raising funds for a survivor based project, is always a challenge. I toured the facility and realized if I took
some time and learned.
I was at that facility from
February until August five to six days a week, full time, during the week, 10
to 7 Saturdays half days.
I hadn’t used a Mac since 1986,
which was what they used for all the editing.
So I had to refresh my memory about the difference between a Mac and a PC.
I had a story board, so I had a
clear idea of what I wanted as a finished product, the challenge was learning
the software to get there.
It was extremely difficult, but
now having gone through it, I enjoyed the creative process, I enjoyed learning
the techniques, sound equipment, camera
My wife and I run a small
antique and consignment store, so she took care of the business end of the
store and I did what I need to do at the time.
First private screening was
mid-October 2013.
I spent from October to
December re-editing. There’s always a
little bit of tweaking I want to do. Showed it again in November. On a forty-foot screen a totally different
feel, so I made adjustments.
My hope is having it shown in
cinema as well as televisions.
RELEVANT LINKS
CUT PARAGRAPH from this post:
Here we have the A--hole
Catholic sequence of the film, where John Allen is convincing Bernie McDaid
that people come all the time to try and see the Pope and they're no different
from anyone else. I mean, wait a minute,
they're representing victims of Joseph Birmingham, one of the worst predators
among the pedophile priests in Boston.
That's not quite the same as, “I want to meet with the pope to have him
bless my daughter’s ballet shoes,” this is serious business.
Here is the conversation
John A: It's a long shot you'll get in to see the
Pope, let me tell ya.
Bernie McD: I feel we should meet the Pope.
John A: I'm not saying you shouldn't.
Bernie McD: I'm not out in left
field in thinking that we can, I don't even want to go there, I don't know if
you understand my-
John A: I do but I'm just trying to give you the sort
of realistic lay of the land, which is people come into Rome every day.
Bernie McD: I understand-
John A: Dozens of them every day and every one of
them is convinced that they have something that's urgently important for our
Pope.
Bernie McD: Really?
------------------------
“The first time we went to Rome it was the week the U.S. invaded Iraq,” Bergeron said in a recent interview. “A year after the date I went public March 2002." The second trip was October 29, 2010, where Survivors Voice International held the first Reformation Day event in St. Peter’s Square, in moving footage from the film.
I highly recommend the DVD of Basta to anyone who wonders what they can do to help get out to the public information about this epidemic of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, even if it means just showing it to one small group of friends at a time. If we don't take publicizing of these crimes into our own hands, the Church is going to get away with decades of felonious aiding and abetting of pedophilia, resulting in hundreds of thousands of victims all over the world. If we don't start getting aggressive with telling our stories, The Vatican will escape any repercussions, other than nasty jokes in comedy routines. Bergeron’s tenacity in producing this film is an example for all of us. Keep trying, keep producing, don't let the obstacles keep you from keeping on.
-----------------------
Posted by Kay Ebeling
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_____________________________________
CUT PARAGRAPHS:
One of 56 publicly known
survivors of Joseph Fr. Joseph Birmingham of Boston, Gary Bergeron keeps going
on, one foot in front of the other, an example to the rest of us pedophile
priest victims that no matter what they do to us, we should work as hard as we
can to get the truth about these crimes out to the public.
CUT PARAGRAPH:
You'll laugh when you see
McDaid trying to get past the Vatican guards, you'll cry when you see the
candlelight ceremony as the group McDaid and Bergeron formed, Survivors Voice,
went international at a session outside yet another Vatican building ( always on
the outside while the golden garbed inside dine on pigeon )
Note: Get across Gary's tenacity, the way his
work motivates me to keep going, even after down times, to get back up and keep
going.
-ke
PLEASE
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