Hollywood movie star Shia LaBeouf has become a Catholic after playing the role of St Pio of Pietrelcina in a forthcoming film.
The Transformers and Fury actor also revealed his devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass in an 80-minute interview with Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester and Word on Fire ministries.
LaBeouf describes receiving Holy Communion for the first time as a turning point in his life and he now regularly attends Mass, including during the week, and prays the Rosary.
“I start feeling a physical effect from it,” he said about the Eucharist. “I start feeling a reprieve and it starts feeling, like, regenerative, and start enjoying it to such a degree I don't want to miss it, ever.”
LaBeouf’s mother was Jewish and he made his bar mitzvah at the age of 13, he was also baptised a Christian by a Methodist uncle at about the same time.
But he said he only truly found God when he was filming Padre Pio, a biopic about the 20<sup>th</sup> century Italian stigmatist by Abel Ferrara which premieres at the Venice Film Festival on September 9.
He had also been at an emotional low following an acrimonious separation from DC Twigs, his British ex-girlfriend who is suing him for “relentless abuse”.
He said: “I had a gun on the table. I was outta here. I didn’t want to be alive anymore when all this happened. Shame like I had never experienced before—the kind of shame that you forget how to breathe. You don’t know where to go.”
But his work took him to a Franciscan monastery where he said he experienced the mercy of God for sinners.
“When I got here, a switch happened,” he said. “It was like Three-Card Monte. It was like someone tricked me into it, it felt like. Not in a bad way. In a way that I couldn’t see it. I was so close to it that I couldn’t see it. I see it differently now that time has passed.”
“It was seeing other people who have sinned beyond anything I could ever conceptualise also being found in Christ that made me feel like, ‘Oh, that gives me hope,’” LaBeouf, 36, continued. “I started hearing experiences of other depraved people who had found their way in this, and it made me feel like I had permission.”
He added: “The reach-out had happened. I was already there, I had nowhere to go. This was the last stop on the train. There was nowhere else to go - in every sense.
“I know now that God was using my ego to draw me to Him. Drawing me away from worldly desires. It was all happening simultaneously. But there would have been no impetus for me to get in my car, drive up [to the monastery] if I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna save my career’.”
The actor studied the life of Padre Pio and he also read the Gospels and discovered a figure of Jesus different from the “soft, fragile, all loving, all listening” person he had always thought Christ to be.
The Capuchin friars also introduced LaBeouf to the Mass and he found himself especially attracted to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite – the Traditional Latin Mass, telling Bishop Barron that he felt as if someone was sharing a “profound secret” with him and “not selling me a car”.
He continued to attend Latin Masses celebrated by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest in Oakland, California.
Capuchin Brother Alexander Rodriguez, who advised LaBeouf during the filming of Padre Pio, said that the actor was on an RCIA programme but did not complete it when he discovered he was already baptised.
Instead, he was given Holy Communion and from that point resolved that he would never miss Mass again.
Brother Alexander said that LaBeouf now appears “always wanting to learn” about the Catholic faith.
<em>(Photo Shutterstock/CNA)</em>
Hollywood movie star Shia LaBeouf has become a Catholic after playing the role of St Pio of Pietrelcina in a forthcoming film.
The Transformers and Fury actor also revealed his devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass in an 80-minute interview with Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester and Word on Fire ministries.
LaBeouf describes receiving Holy Communion for the first time as a turning point in his life and he now regularly attends Mass, including during the week, and prays the Rosary.
“I start feeling a physical effect from it,” he said about the Eucharist. “I start feeling a reprieve and it starts feeling, like, regenerative, and start enjoying it to such a degree I don't want to miss it, ever.”
LaBeouf’s mother was Jewish and he made his bar mitzvah at the age of 13, he was also baptised a Christian by a Methodist uncle at about the same time.
But he said he only truly found God when he was filming Padre Pio, a biopic about the 20<sup>th</sup> century Italian stigmatist by Abel Ferrara which premieres at the Venice Film Festival on September 9.
He had also been at an emotional low following an acrimonious separation from DC Twigs, his British ex-girlfriend who is suing him for “relentless abuse”.
He said: “I had a gun on the table. I was outta here. I didn’t want to be alive anymore when all this happened. Shame like I had never experienced before—the kind of shame that you forget how to breathe. You don’t know where to go.”
But his work took him to a Franciscan monastery where he said he experienced the mercy of God for sinners.
“When I got here, a switch happened,” he said. “It was like Three-Card Monte. It was like someone tricked me into it, it felt like. Not in a bad way. In a way that I couldn’t see it. I was so close to it that I couldn’t see it. I see it differently now that time has passed.”
“It was seeing other people who have sinned beyond anything I could ever conceptualise also being found in Christ that made me feel like, ‘Oh, that gives me hope,’” LaBeouf, 36, continued. “I started hearing experiences of other depraved people who had found their way in this, and it made me feel like I had permission.”
He added: “The reach-out had happened. I was already there, I had nowhere to go. This was the last stop on the train. There was nowhere else to go - in every sense.
“I know now that God was using my ego to draw me to Him. Drawing me away from worldly desires. It was all happening simultaneously. But there would have been no impetus for me to get in my car, drive up [to the monastery] if I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna save my career’.”
The actor studied the life of Padre Pio and he also read the Gospels and discovered a figure of Jesus different from the “soft, fragile, all loving, all listening” person he had always thought Christ to be.
The Capuchin friars also introduced LaBeouf to the Mass and he found himself especially attracted to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite – the Traditional Latin Mass, telling Bishop Barron that he felt as if someone was sharing a “profound secret” with him and “not selling me a car”.
He continued to attend Latin Masses celebrated by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest in Oakland, California.
Capuchin Brother Alexander Rodriguez, who advised LaBeouf during the filming of Padre Pio, said that the actor was on an RCIA programme but did not complete it when he discovered he was already baptised.
Instead, he was given Holy Communion and from that point resolved that he would never miss Mass again.
Brother Alexander said that LaBeouf now appears “always wanting to learn” about the Catholic faith.
<em>(Photo Shutterstock/CNA)</em>
