As “part of the Vatican’s
efforts to reach out beyond the Catholic Church to engage with the secular
world,” Pope Leo spoke with actors and directors on November 15, 2025 about the
ability of film “to inspire and unite.”[1]
He spoke to the filmmakers about film itself as an art, and what it can do
socially. What it can do in a distinctively religious sense was oddly left out.
I submit that leaving out how film can contribute to spirituality wherein a transcendent
is explicitly included, while instead discussing the social functions of film
not only limits the potential of film, but also ironically marginalizes a significant
potential of film ironically in the pope’s own field.
Speaking generically about the
medium of film, Pope Leo stated that it “articulates the questions that dwell
within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we didn’t know we needed to
shed.”[2]
There is nothing distinctively religious or spiritual about these features
of movies. Two of the pope’s favorite movies, “Ordinary People” (1980), which
was filmed in the pope’s hometown, Chicago, and “Life is Beautiful” (1997) are
known for their psychological aspects: a family dealing with one son’s suicide
and another family dealing with the Nazis in Europe. In fact, neither film
includes anything religious or spiritual. Admittedly, since the works of Sigmund
Freud were published, it has been tempting in Western culture to reduce religion
to psychology, or to conflate the two distinct domains if they were the same. The
increasing secularizing of North America and Europe in the twentieth century no
doubt played a role in reconfiguring religion as it were isomorphic with another
domain. Had the faculty and librarians at Harvard, including Larry Summers and
Ben Friedman (both economists), not been so rude and even brazenly passive
aggressive toward me while I was conducting research there on the category
mistake by pulling the weeds out of the religious garden to find what lies
underneath as the native fauna distinct to religion, I might have written a
treatise on religion sui generis. At a certain age, however, a person
can simply ask oneself, do I really want to contribute to the American
academic academy? But I digress.
In his talk, the pope went so
far as to make a political or cultural statement regarding the ability of film
to not merely console, but also challenge people by including marginal voices. In
its “noblest sense,” he said, the “popular art” of motion pictures is “intended
for and accessible to all.”[3]
Rather than urging theater-owners to charge poor people less, the pope was
advocating that different points of view, presumably on social, economic, and
even political matters, be included in screenplays. To be sure, such a function
of film—to widen popular debates to include more perspectives—would be of great
value to a society, given the phenomenon of “group-think,” which George Orwell
discusses in his book, “1984,” and the self-interested strategies of business and
political elites to artificially narrow what is debated to keep truly
challenging perspectives from being aired.
Nevertheless, a religious leader
overreaches in putting such an emphasis on secular, ideological concerns,
including “affirming the social and cultural value” of people watching movies
together in a movie theater without mentioning that high ticket prices keep out
the poor and so they should instead be watching movies alone, assuming
they have laptops and wifi. That the advent of computer technology has made an
expensive ticket at a movie theater optional suggests that the pope’s nostalgia
in addressing filmmakers in 2025 was partial, as is the case with any ideology.
That he inadvertently put unneeded pressure on poor and even lower middle-class
people to pay steep ticket-prices so they can be included in “uniting” with other
people merely in being in a dark room together reacting similarly to scenes in
a movie, supports my point that he should have stayed with his knitting, which
is a saying in the book, In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman,
whose main point is that companies should stick to what they are good at,
rather than wander off in a Zhuangzian fashion into other lines of business to get more
in profits as a Mohist would.
The pope’s focus on matters
that were not directly in his forte not only rendered him subject to correction,
but also came with an opportunity cost in terms of the foregone benefit that a
talk on the potential of film in theology or spirituality would have had
instead. Even in saying that “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) and “The Sound of Music” (1964) were two of his other favorite films, the pope did not mention
films among his favorites that are centered on religion, and even more
surprisingly absent, on the Gospels in particular, such as “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), “The Passion of the Christ” (2004), “Jesus” (1999), “The
Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), “King of Kings” (1961), and even “The
Nativity Story” (2006), "Mary" (2024), and “Ben-Hur” (1959). “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977), albeit
a television mini-series though with an astounding cast, was undoubtedly formative
for the pope, as he was a college student when the show first aired. I remember
well watching that limited series as a boy. As a college student then, the pope
would not have missed such a series. I
remember what the very religious college students in the years soon after the
pope had graduated; they were very focused on their religious faith. One
Baptist student curiously in ROTC used to come (uninvited) sometimes into my dorm
room while I was studying at night to pray for me because my roommate was an
evangelical Christian. This was nothing compared to the Calvinist cult I would
encounter at Yale’s divinity school and then the “woke” cult at Harvard’s
divinity school. But I digress (again).
I contend that Pope Leo missed
an opportunity in 2025 to address filmmakers about how film can address theology,
as well as related though distinct things like metaphysics, the supernatural,
science, and morality. For example, theology in terms of two different
interpretations of the Kingdom of God is salient in the film, “Mary Magdalene”
(2018), especially when Mary and Peter debate two very different yet valid
interpretations of what the Kingdom of God is. The question of the woman’s
place among the disciples is an element of the film, but as Mary and Jesus are
not romantically or sexually but only spiritually close, the feminist angle
between Mary and the rest of the disciples is kept secondary. For the pope to have
highlighted that angle, his take on contemporary culture could have eclipsed
distinctly theological questions regarding the Kingdom of God. Even the
Catholic Church’s stance against women becoming priests is not theological, and
the closeness of Mary to Jesus in the film, plus The Gospel of Mary Magdalene,
can inform that Church’s stance on that issue. But I digress (again).
Besides theology in and through film, how a character’s experience of distinctly religious (or
spiritual) transcendence can be acted and depicted in a film visually would have
been an excellent topic for the pope’s talk. That films have effectively
portrayed two different realms, even simultaneously as in the film, “The
Others" (2001), in a secular, otherworldly context, means that the medium of
film could do a lot more when it comes to visually and verbally hinting at a
distinctively religious or spiritual transcendent, which can be grasped (to a
point) as something that is inherently beyond the limits of human
cognition, perspective, and emotion.[4]
Ironically, religious leaders may be most useful in speaking to a secular
audience by highlighting how the domain of religion is distinct, rather than in
trying to be influential in secular, ideological terms. Pope Leo should have
stuck to his knitting, for the potential of the art and medium of film in
depicting spiritual and institutionally-religious matters is great, and on this
point I most certainly do not digress.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. I am drawing here on the work of Pseudo-Dionysus, a late 6th century Christian theologian who stressed the ineffability of God.
