Martin Scorsese is talking about vocations. It’s s a subject he knows something about, having studied at a seminary when he was a young man. In the end – as history and an armful of awards can attest – he decided to be a film-maker rather than a priest, but as he himself points out most firmly, a vocation does not necessarily have to be a clerical one.
“Vocation is very special,” says the legendary director, who at the age of 14 entered Cathedral College Seminary in New York with a view to entering the priesthood. “I entered the seminary because I had a mentor – Fr Principe his name was. He was down in the Lower East Side and he had a great effect on my life from the ages of 11 to 17. He was a major influence on a lot of us kids in those days, he’d give us books by Graham Greene and Dwight Macdonald and many others, and he opened my eyes to a lot intellectually.
