Hollywood stars met Pope Leo XIV on the Vatican, the place the pontiff referred to as cinema a “workshop of hope” and lamented declining audiences.
The line-up of movie stars and administrators meeting the primary American pope on Saturday included Oscar-winners Cate Blanchett, identified for “Aviator” and “Elizabeth”, and Spike Lee, who directed “Malcolm X” and “BlacKkKlansman”.
All these current within the viewers within the Vatican’s apostolic palace met Leo personally on the finish, with Lee presenting the first American pope with a New York Knicks jersey.
Monica Bellucci, who performed Mary Magdalene in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”, additionally met the pope on Saturday, as did actor Adam Scott, of the sequence “Parks and Recreation” and “Severance”, and Sergio Castellitto, who performed the “vaping cardinal” Tedesco within the film “Conclave” that dramatizes the secretive papal election course of.
“The Church esteems you for your work with light and time, with faces and landscapes, with words and silence,” Leo instructed them.
“I wish to renew this friendship because cinema is a workshop of hope, a place where people can once again find themselves and their purpose.”
The meeting befell, the Vatican stated, to “deepen dialogue with the World of Cinema” and discover the “possibilities that artistic creativity offers to the mission of the Church.” It additionally comes as the church is searching for to achieve new audiences with a new Gallup World Poll displaying a 17-point drop within the share of adults within the US who say faith is a vital of their day by day life.
In his speech, delivered in Italian, Leo additionally lamented the “troubling decline” of cinemas, which he stated have been more and more being faraway from cities.
“I urge institutions not to give up, but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value of this activity,” he stated in remarks that have been greeted by an applause.
The Chicago-born pontiff had shared his favorite movies forward of the meeting, naming “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), “The Sound of Music” (1965), “Ordinary People” (1980), and “Life is Beautiful” (1997).
Rev. Antonio Spadaro, one of many Vatican officers serving to to rearrange the meeting, mirrored that in every of Leo’s chosen movies “goodness appears fragile, naïve, almost out of place – and yet precisely for that reason, revolutionary.”
The Vatican meeting with movie stars follows an analogous gathering hosted by Pope Francis with comedians.