Jason Berry, an author and documentary filmmaker, gained renown for investigative reporting with Lead Us Not into Temptation (1992), which exposed bishops concealing predator priests. Rolling Stone called it “the bible of the survivors’ movement.”
Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (2004) by Jason and Gerald Renner unmasked the pedophile Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the cult-like Legion of Christ. Pope Benedict banished Maciel from ministry in 2006. Jason’s film based on the book released in 2008 aired in several countries and won a best documentary award at Mexico City’s Docs D.F.
His 2010 series for GlobalPost and National Catholic Reporter on Maciel’s history of paying bribes to Vatican officials won an Annie E Casey Medal and other awards. In 2011 Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church (Crown) won Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Best Book award.
Jason is also a historian of his home town in Up From the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music Since World War II and City of a Million Dreams: New Orleans at Year 300. His documentary based on the latter book uses jazz funerals as a lens on history, available on VOD. Jason received NEH and Guggenheim fellowships for New Orleans research and an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship for reporting on demagoguery in Louisiana. He writes often for The Guardian. His eleventh book, Conversations with Jason Berry, edited by Howard Hunter, is published by University Press of Mississippi.
