Martin Scorsese meets the Pope, announces he’ll make (another) movie about Jesus

After the rapturous debut of “Killers of the Flower Moon” at the Cannes Film Festival a little over a week ago, Oscar-winner Martin Scorsese stuck around the region before flying back to his home in New York City. The 80-year-old director and his wife, Helen Morris, met Pope Francis in Rome. (Not his first time! The two got together in 2016, with the release of Silence.) This time, though, Scorsese was just one of many artists, who had been invited to the Vatican. 

This was part of a weekend called “The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination” held at the Villa Malta, headquarters of the Jesuit publication “La Civiltà Cattolica.” One attraction of the summit was when Scorsese sat with the journal’s editorial director Antonio Spadaro for a discussion, and it was here, in quite possibly the last place on Earth you’d expect “a scoop,” where arguably the greatest living film director dished about his next project. 

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“I responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” he said. “And I’m about to start making it.”

He continued by discussing his love of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 film “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” and reflected on the time making his movie “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which was released in 1988.

Scorsese is staying in Rome for a few more days, hosting events. There will even be a free, outdoor screening of “Mean Streets” in Villa Borghese Park. How does one say “what’s a mook?” in Italian?

As it happens, “Killers of the Flower Moon” star Leonardo DiCaprio decided to turn his Cannes trip into a Mediterranean adventure, too. Instead of pledging artistic allegiance to the Pope, however, he was seen on a yacht with half-naked women off the coast of Sardinia.

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