St. Maria Goretti Parish

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Meeting an international cast of film directors and actors, Pope Leo XIV spoke about the power of cinema to help people "contemplate and understand life, to recount its greatness and fragility and to portray the longing for infinity." 

Sitting in the front row of the Vatican's frescoed Clementine Hall Nov. 15 were, among others: directors Gus Van Sant and Spike Lee and actors Monica Bellucci, Cate Blanchett, Viggo Mortensen and Sergio Castellitto, who played the traditionalist Cardinal Tedesco in the 2024 film "Conclave."

In a video released a few days before the meeting, Pope Leo said his four favorite films were: "It's a Wonderful Life," the 1946 film directed by Frank Capra; "The Sound of Music," the 1965 film by Robert Wise; "Ordinary People," the 1980 film directed by Robert Redford; and "Life Is Beautiful," Roberto Benigni's 1997 film.

Pope Leo asked the directors and actors to "defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative."

"Beauty is not just a means of escape," he told them; "it is above all an invocation." 

"When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console, but challenges," he said. "It articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express."

Pope Leo acknowledged the challenges facing cinema with the closing of theaters and the increasing release of films directly to streaming services.

The theaters, like all public cultural spaces, are important to a community, he said.

But even more, the pope said, "entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold. In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined." 

At a time where people are almost constantly in front of screens, he said, cinema offers more. "It is a sensory journey in which light pierces the darkness and words meet silence. As the plot unfolds, our mind is educated, our imagination broadens and even pain can find new meaning."

People need "witnesses of hope, beauty and truth," Pope Leo said, telling the directors and actors that they can be those witnesses.

"Good cinema and those who create and star in it have the power to recover the authenticity of imagery in order to safeguard and promote human dignity," he said.

Being authentic, the pope said, means not being afraid "to confront the world's wounds. Violence, poverty, exile, loneliness, addiction and forgotten wars are issues that need to be acknowledged and narrated."

"Good cinema does not exploit pain," Pope Leo said. "It recognizes and explores it."

"Giving voice to the complex, contradictory and sometimes dark feelings that dwell in the human heart is an act of love," he told them. "Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it."

Coming to the Vatican during the Jubilee of hope, he said, the directors and actors join millions of pilgrims who have made the journey over the past year.

"Your journey is not measured in kilometers but in images, words, emotions, shared memories and collective desires," the pope told them. "You navigate this pilgrimage into the mystery of human experience with a penetrating gaze that is capable of recognizing beauty even in the depths of pain, and of discerning hope in the tragedy of violence and war."

The pope prayed that their work would "never lose its capacity to amaze and even continue to offer us a glimpse, however small, of the mystery of God."

 

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Academic rigor, dialogue and openness to other cultures and disciplines are essential for a Catholic university and even more so for the Pontifical Lateran University, which is often called "the pope's university," Pope Leo XIV said.

The pope officially opened the Rome university's 2025-2026 academic year Nov. 14 and told faculty and students that because they come from all over the world, they represent "a microcosm of the universal church: therefore, be a prophetic sign of communion and fraternity."

The university, founded by Pope Clement XIV in 1773 to train priests for the pope's Diocese of Rome, currently has about 130 professors and just over 1,000 students, mainly studying philosophy, theology, civil law and canon law.

To truly serve the church and the world, Pope Leo said, the university must maintain the highest academic standards. 

"The risk is that we slip into the temptation to simplify complex issues in order to avoid the labor of thought, with the danger that, even in pastoral action and in its forms of expression, we sink into banality, superficiality or rigidity," he said.

"Scientific inquiry and the effort of research are necessary. We need well-prepared and competent laypeople and priests," he said. "Therefore, I urge you not to lower your guard regarding scientific rigor, but to carry forward a passionate search for truth and a robust engagement with other sciences, with reality and with the problems and struggles of society."

Faith must be studied in a way that leads to it being expressed "within current cultural settings and challenges," he said, but those studies also are a way "to counter the risk of the cultural void that, in our age, is becoming increasingly pervasive."

The school's Faculty of Theology, the pope said, must find ways to bring forth the "beauty and credibility" of the Christian faith "so that it can appear as a fully human proposal, capable of transforming the lives of individuals and of society, of sparking prophetic changes in response to the tragedies and poverties of our time, and of encouraging the search for God."

The pope also encouraged the university to look for ways to strengthen its courses in peace studies and in ecology.

"The issues they address are an essential part of the recent magisterium of the church which, established as a sign of the covenant between God and humanity, is called to form workers for peace and justice who build and bear witness to the kingdom of God," the pope said.

Everything a Catholic university does, Pope Leo said, should be done with dialogue, respect and the aim of building up a real community of brothers and sisters. 

That sense of fraternity, he said, is essential for countering "the appeal of individualism as the key to a successful life," which has "disturbing consequences in every sphere: people focus on self-promotion, the primacy of the ego is fueled, cooperation becomes difficult, prejudices and barriers toward others -- especially those who are different -- grow, responsibility in service is mistaken for solitary leadership, and in the end misunderstandings and conflicts multiply."

On a human and religious level, Pope Leo said, a Catholic university is called to promote the common good and prepare students to contribute to the good of their churches and communities.

"The aim of the educational and academic process must be to form people who, guided by the logic of gratuitousness and by a passion for truth and justice, can become builders of a new, fraternal and supportive world," he said. "The university can and must spread this culture, becoming a sign and expression of this new world and of the pursuit of the common good."
 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Leo XIV does not intend to overturn Pope Francis' limits on celebrating the traditional Latin Mass but will grant two-year dispensations to bishops who ask, a nuncio said.

Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendía, the apostolic nuncio to Great Britain, told bishops Nov. 13 that Pope Leo told him he would not abrogate "Traditionis Custodes," Pope Francis' 2021 letter greatly restricting the celebration of Masses according to the 1962 Roman Missal, the Latin liturgy in use before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The Vatican press office did not respond to a request for comment.

But the archbishop made headlines by telling members of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales that the pope would grant bishops who request it a two-year, renewable exemption.

The exemptions are nothing new, a Vatican official told Catholic News Service Nov. 14.

"This is no more than a restatement of the practice of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments since the motu proprio ('Traditionis Custodes') came into force," said Msgr. Enda Murphy, an official at the dicastery. 

"What the nuncio is clearly referring to is the necessity for a diocesan bishop to request a derogation from art. 3 § 2 of 'Traditionis Custodes' in order that Mass according to the Missale Romanum of 1962 can be celebrated in a parish church," he said.

The subsection referred to by Msgr. Murphy says that a bishop can designate one or more locations where the faithful who had been celebrating the older Mass could continue to do so, "not however in the parochial churches and without the erection of new personal parishes."

In late October, various Catholic news outlets reported that the Diocese of Cleveland, led by Bishop Edward C. Malesic, had received permission for the older Latin Mass to continue at two parish churches in his diocese. In July, Bishop Michael Sis of San Angelo, Texas, confirmed that he had made a similar request, which was granted.

Pope Leo also personally granted permission for U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, a former Vatican official, to celebrate the older form of the Mass in St. Peter's Basilica in late October.

When Pope Francis issued the restrictions, he declared the liturgical books promulgated after the Second Vatican Council to be "the unique expression of the 'lex orandi' (law of worship) of the Roman Rite," restored the obligation of priests to have their bishops' permission to celebrate according to the "extraordinary" or pre-Vatican II Mass and ordered bishops not to establish any new groups or parishes in their dioceses devoted to the old liturgy.

At the time, Pope Francis said his decision was meant "to promote the concord and unity of the church."
 

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