Pope Leo told a group of leading Hollywood actors and filmmakers on Saturday that cinemas were struggling to survive and that more should be done to protect them and preserve the shared experience of watching movies.
Screen stars Cate Blanchett, Monica Bellucci, Chris Pine and Viggo Mortensen were among those invited to the private Vatican audience, along with award-winning directors Spike Lee, Gus Van Sant and Sally Potter.
Leo, the first American pope, said the cinema was an important “workshop of hope” at a time of global uncertainty and digital overload.
“Cinemas are experiencing a worrying decline, with many being removed from cities and neighbourhoods,” he added.
“More than a few people say that the art of cinema and the experience of cinema are in danger. I call on the institutions not to give up, but to work together to affirm the social and cultural value of this activity.”
Box office receipts in many countries remain well below levels recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic, with multiplexes in the US and Canada just suffering their worst summer since 1981, excluding the COVID shutdown.
POPE SAYS LOGIC OF ALGORITHMS MUST BE RESISTED
Leo said cinema, which marks its 130th anniversary this year, had grown from a play of light and shadow into a form capable of revealing humanity’s deepest questions.
“Cinema is not just moving images; it sets hope in motion,” he said, adding that entering a theater was “like crossing a threshold” where imagination expands and even pain can find new meaning.
A culture shaped by constant digital stimuli risks reducing stories to what algorithms predict will succeed, he said.
“The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what works, but art opens up what is possible,” he said, urging filmmakers to champion “slowness, silence and diversity” in serving history.
The Pope also called on artists to confront violence, war, poverty and loneliness with honesty, saying that good cinema “does not exploit pain; it recognizes and explores it”.
Australia’s Cate Blanchett said his call carried weight.
“His Holiness’ words today were a real charge not to shy away from difficult, painful stories,” she told reporters. “He really encouraged us to go back to our day jobs and inspire people.”
The Pope praised not only directors and actors, but the vast array of behind-the-scenes workers whose craft make movies possible, calling filmmaking “a collective endeavor in which no one is self-sufficient.”
At the end of his speech, the long list of invitees met the Pope one by one, many offering him gifts, including Spike Lee, who gave him a New York Knicks basketball jersey emblazoned with “Pope Leo 14”.
“It was a surprise to me that I even got an invitation,” Lee told reporters. “I’ve been to Rome many, many times. But (it was) the first time in Vatican City and the first time I met the Pope. So it was… a great day, a great day.”
Ahead of Saturday’s meeting, the Vatican shared four of the pope’s favorite movies: Robert Wise’s family musical “The Sound of Music,” Frank Capra’s feel-good “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Robert Redford’s heartbreaking “Ordinary People” and Roberto Benigni’s sentimental World War II drama “Life Is Beautiful.”
