Gianni Gennari, a leading theologian and a columnist for Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops, called on Catholics to boycott Angels & Demons, accusing the film-makers of “exploiting the Church to swell takings at the box office”. He suggested that the film was part of a “masonic plot to undermine the credibility of the Church”. Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, the head of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that to dramatise the faults of the film would be a “publicity gift” to the film-makers. “We should not play these people at their own game,” he told La Stampa. Angels & Demons was published before The Da Vinci Code, which was based on the premise that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and had children. The new film will star Tom Hanks, who played the Harvard professor Robert Langdon in the first film, and will have the same director, Ron Howard. Key scenes are set in the Vatican and in two Roman churches, Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria, but film-makers were denied permission to shoot in any of the locations. Father Marco Fibbi, spokesman for the Diocese of Rome, said: “Normally we read the script but this time it was not necessary; the name Dan Brown was enough.” Vatican officials said that they had been unable to prevent exterior shots of St Peter’s and the surrounding medieval streets of the Borgo. However, the filmakers are having to use the marble halls and staircases of the former Royal Palace at Caserta near Naples to double as Vatican interiors. “When a film is about the saints or about stories regarding the church’s artistic values, then we give permission without any doubts,” Father Fibbi said. “But when it is a question of content which does not relate to traditional religious criteria, then our doors are closed.
Appunti di un anonimo italiano
24/3/2009
