Airdate: Secrets of the Vatican

This Sunday night SBS screens a Frontline doco that looks at the scandals that rocked Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy and the transition to Pope Francis, from award-winning director Antony Thomas.

Pope Benedict made history when he announced his resignation, becoming the first Pope to step down voluntarily in six hundred years. In his wake he left a bitterly divided Vatican mired in scandals. But is Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, taming the forces that helped destroy Benedict’s papacy? Is he succeeding in lifting the Church out of crisis? Secrets of the Vatican goes inside the Vatican – one of the world’s most revered and mysterious institutions – to unravel the remarkable series of events that led to the resignation that shook the world.

Through interviews with those at the very heart of what happened – cardinals, priests, convicted criminals, police, prosecutors and whistle-blowers – Secrets of the Vatican gives a first-hand account of the final days of Benedict’s papacy and the current battle to set the Church on a new path under Francis.

In 2013, after receiving a confidential dossier on troubles in the Catholic Church, Benedict XVI became the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign. Secrets of the Vatican expose the threats and scandals that rocked Benedict’s papacy: a far-reaching clergy sex abuse crisis; money laundering and corruption at the Vatican Bank; and Vatileaks – the release of internal documents revealing cronyism, power struggles, and allegations of blackmail within the Holy See.

From award-winning director Antony Thomas, Secrets of the Vatican tells the inside story of the collapse of the Benedict Papacy – and the extraordinary challenges facing Pope Francis as he tries to reform the powerful Vatican bureaucracy, root out corruption, and chart a new course for the troubled Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion followers.

Sunday, 3 August at 8.30pm on SBS ONE