For immediate release:
April 28, 2005

Contact:
Mary Healey-Conlon: [email protected] 401-578-5482
www.holywater-gate.com
Louise Rosen [email protected] 617-730-8430

**Showtime Premiere of Holy Water-Gate: Abuse Cover-up in the Catholic Church**

Award winning documentary Holy Water-Gate: Abuse Cover-up in the Catholic Church has been acquired by SHOWTIME NETWORKS and is scheduled for broadcast May 19 at 10 p.m., May 25 at 10:10 p.m. and May 27 at 10:15 p.m.

The 56-minute documentary, which examines the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal and the fallout of a decades-long cover-up to conceal the truth, was purchased as a companion program to the SHOWTIME original picture "Our Fathers" starring Christopher Plummer, Brian Dennehy and Ted Danson.

Holy Water-Gate features exclusive interviews with several key figures, among them a pedophile priest who describes how his crimes were concealed by both church and civil authorities. After 17 years of therapy and reassignments to six different parishes, his last assignment was to head youth programs.

Francis Cardinal George, one of the most powerful figures in the American Catholic Church comments from the center of the storm. George served as chairman of the Vatican's Commission on Sex Abuse Policy and has recently ascended to vice-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Father John Bambrick is also featured in the film. Fr. Bambrick is a priest who was himself molested by a priest as an adolescent and later charged by the church's canon court for publicly disclosing the experience. Father Bambrick's story and those of four other survivors are reconstructed with archive and contemporary photography. They are interwoven with the perpetrator's revelations and scenes of the church's efforts to content with an international maelstrom that has not yet seen resolution.

The documentary was produced, written and directed by filmmaker Mary Healey-Conlon, a lecturer in the Communication Studies Department of the University of Rhode Island. It was awarded a CINE GOLDEN EAGLE in investigative journalism. The film has been broadcast in Canada, Australia, Spain, Switzerland and is slated to screen in Denmark.

"With swift, deft scalpel strokes, Holy Water-Gate lays bare hypocrisy and institutionalized abuse in the Catholic Church. The film shows this graphically, but also that humble, decent priests still do Christ's work at grassroots level, and that some even risk everything to fight the snakes in their hierarchy."
-Michael Rabiger, Author, Filmmaker and recipient of the IDA Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award