Director Martin Scorsese has described his new film Silence as a major stage in his pilgrimage of faith, a pilgrimage that included dropping out of the minor seminary, investigating other religions and recognising that the Catholic Church was his home.
Growing up in New York, “I was extraordinarily lucky, because I had a remarkable priest, Fr Principe. I learned so much from him, and that includes mercy with oneself and with others,” Mr Scorsese told Jesuit Fr Antonio Spadaro, editor of the journal La Civiltà Cattolica.
“This man was a real guide. He could talk tough, but he never actually forced you to do anything – he guided you. Advised you. Cajoled you. He had such extraordinary love,” he said in the interview, published last Friday. A day earlier, America magazine released an interview with Mr Scorsese conducted by Jesuit Fr James Martin, who was an adviser during the making of Silence, a film based on the novel by Shūsaku Endō. The book and film are a fictionalised account of the persecution of Christians in 17th-century Japan; the central figures are Jesuit missionaries.
Mr Scorsese had wanted to make the film, to be released in the US on December 23 and the UK on New Year’s Day, since reading the book in 1989.
The process of making the film, he told Fr Martin, “becomes like a pilgrimage. We’re still on the road and it’s never going to end. I thought it would for a little while, but once I was there, I realised no. Even in the editing room, it’s unfinished. It will always be unfinished.”
In the interview with Fr Spadaro, the 74-year-old Mr Scorsese said: “When I was younger, I was thinking of making a film about being a priest. I myself wanted to follow in Fr Principe’s footsteps, so to speak, and be a priest. I went to a preparatory seminary but I failed out the first year.
“And I realised, at the age of 15, that a vocation is something very special, that you can’t acquire it, and you can’t have one just because you want to be like somebody else,” he said. “You have to have a true calling.”
He said he always wondered how Fr Principe and other priests got past their “ego” to focus on the needs of his parishioners. “I wanted to make that film. And I realised that with Silence, almost 60 years later, I was making that film. Rodrigues is struggling directly with that question.”
Relocation of Venerable Fulton Sheen’s body delayed
Peoria, Ilinois, by a court ruling in November allowing Venerable Fulton Sheen’s family to transfer the sainthood candidate’s remains from New York to Peoria, have been tempered by an emergency stay granted to the Archdiocese of New York.Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arlene Bluth had granted the request of Archbishop Sheen’s niece, Joan Sheen Cunningham, to have the remains of the orator and media pioneer removed from St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and transferred to St Mary’s Cathedral in Peoria, where a crypt is being prepared for his reinterment.
But five days later, lawyers representing the Archdiocese of New York and the trustees of St Patrick’s Cathedral – who oppose the relocation of the remains – announced their intention to appeal against Bluth’s ruling, and were granted the stay.
Justice Bluth’s decision had maintained there was “a justifiable, good, and substantial reason for moving the remains”.
He said the move would aid in the canonisation process. Also, the archbishop’s parents are buried nearby in Peoria, and St Mary’s Cathedral is where Archbishop Sheen was ordained a priest and a place he visited often during his lifetime.
Cardinal Tobin leaves diocese
The archdiocese of Indianapolis has said a sad farewell to Cardinal Joseph Tobin after just four years.A Mass at SS Peter and Paul Cathedral was originally planned to celebrate his induction into the College of Cardinals. Instead, after Pope Francis appointed the new cardinal to be the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, a thousand Catholics from across central and southern Indiana gathered in the cathedral to pray with him and say farewell.
