Toronto indie filmmaker takes on the Vatican in new feature
Doc looks at ongoing dispute in Catholic Church regarding 1917 Virgin Mary prophecies
It seems apt to describe independent filmmaker Paul Stark’s first featurelength film as a David versus Goliath battle.
His largely self-financed documentary took more than a decade to get to the screen and its main target is the Catholic Church, all the way to the top.
The Vatican Deception explores a rich and controversial piece of mystical lore from a century ago, the purported 1917 appearance of the Virgin Mary to three children in Fatima, Portugal, six times between May and October.
Lucia Santos, who later became a revered nun, said the Virgin Mary revealed three secrets during those appearances, the third of which, the film alleges, has created seismic divisions within the church.
“It’s an investigative documentary about a set of prophecies and why these prophecies are the centre of the greatest crisis in the history of the Vatican. There’s a battle going on in the Vatican and it’s tearing the church apart,” Stark said.
The film has its official premiere at the Isabel Bader Theatre at 6 p.m. on Friday, followed by 2 p.m. screening at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers on Saturday with a two-week run at the Kingsway Theatre from Friday to Feb. 8.
Stark, who formed his own production company in 2003, said he initially became interested in the subject in 2000, when the turn of the new century revived interest in prophecies.
“We started seeing all kinds of Bible prophecies and ‘end of times’ prophecies resurfacing. These Fatima prophecies also resurfaced,” he said.
Stark initially thought about turning the events into a drama, but realized a documentary was far more plausible considering his limited financing. After several years of re- search, Stark began filming in 2010 at the Shrine of Fatima, a site that celebrated its centennial last year and still attracts thousands of pilgrims annually.
Along the way, Stark met and interviewed people such as the late priest Nicholas Gruner, who founded the Fatima Centre in Fort Erie, Ont. Gruner was infamously assaulted in public at the Portugal shrine. The film also demonstrates how Gruner was digitally edited out of pictures taken by the Vatican’s official photographer when he stood steps away from the Pope in St. Peter’s Square in 2011.
“It was remarkable that (Vatican officials) would go to those lengths. This is one of their own clergy we’re talking about and they’re photoshopping him out (of photos). It made me realize there’s even more of a story there than I even realized,” Stark said.
Gruner, who wrote a book detailing a long campaign by senior church officials to silence him, was also warned, during another visit in 2013, by a senior Vatican security official not to attempt to speak to the Pope.
Other voices in the film include the late priest Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, and the late Malachi Martin, an adviser to three Popes, who recorded a series of interviews before his death.
Both men believe the third secret of Fatima has not been fully revealed, despite the assertions of senior church officials, and that there is serious malaise and division within the church at the highest levels.
Stark noted that last July, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI — the first pontiff to retire rather than die in office in 600 years — said the church is “on the verge of collapsing.”