Catholic Leaders Outraged by Film Award Mon Sep 9, 8:42 AM ET By Crispian Balmer

ROME (Reuters) - Roman Catholic leaders denounced the Venice Film Festival Monday for honoring a British movie that depicts cruelty and abuse in an Irish Catholic institution.

Peter Mullan's hard-hitting "The Magdalene Sisters" won the Festival's prestigious Golden Lion award late Sunday -- a decision that infuriated churchmen who branded the film anti-Catholic propaganda.

"I feel enormous bitterness...This doesn't do any credit to the Venice Festival," said Cardinal Ersilio Tonini. "This isn't a truthful portrayal of the Church and its director has made libelous statements against Catholics," he told reporters. The movie follows the lives of four, supposedly promiscuous girls interned in Ireland's Magdalene Asylums in the 1960s, forced to work like slaves in laundries and abused by the nuns. Based on a true story, the girls are locked up for shocking reasons, such as having being raped or being "too" pretty.

--If it pisses off Catholic Leaders, I must see it!!