THE ROOM OF TEARS

Protagonists :

• Marco POLOTI, vaticanist
• Gianluigi NUZZI, investigative journalist, author of “His Holiness scandal in the Vatican” and “Vatican SA”
• Christian TERRAS, journalist, founder of the magazine “Golias”
• Mgr Joao BRAZ DE AVIZ, Brazilian cardinal
• Mgr Michael L. FITZGERALD, President of the Interreligious Council and Vatican Ambassador to Egypt
• Tony FLANNERY, Irish dissident priest
• Eugenio S CALFARI, Journalist, founder of “La Repubblica” (Italy)

The election of Pope Francis, the first non-European pope in history, gave rise to great hope in a troubled Catholic world. Some people want to believe in the coming springtime of the Church. From Rome to Rio de Janeiro via Ireland, this film is a journey into the mysteries of the Vatican City at a time in its history when tongues are being loosened as never before to expose the Church’s problems: vocational crisis, financial transparency, paedophilia, the role of women, the decline of the Catholic faith in favour of Islam and evangelical cults. The Brazilian Cardinal Braz de Aviz, eminent head of the Roman Curia; Tony Flannery, an Irish progressive priest threatened with excommunication; and Bishop Fitzgerald, the Vatican ambassador in Cairo during the Arab Spring… three men of the Church with very different profiles share with us their free views on the Vatican and its secrets. Christian Terras, founder of the progressive Catholic magazine “Golias”; Marco Politi, Vaticanist, author of several books on John Paul II and Benedict XVI; and Gianluigi Nuzzi, the journalist through whom the “Vatileaks” scandal happened, present us with the portrait of a Holy See on the verge of a nervous breakdown… placed before a choice he refuses to make: reform or die.