Good Samaritans: Moving-Picture Clerics and the Inclusive Vision of Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti

 

Presented May 6, 2023 at St. Mark’s College in Vancouver (Pope Francis and the Future of the Church: Prospects and Challenges for Renewal)

Abstract:

In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti (‘all brothers’), Pope Francis offered his message not only to the Catholic faithful but to “all people of good will”. Taking up this “invitation to dialogue” as an agnostic committed to the peaceful coexistence of religious and non-religious people, I utilize a cultural studies lens to examine representations of Catholic clerics in the movies. While sinister images of child abuse and conspiracy theories may dominate in our contemporary context, the depictions themselves are more varied and I here focus on the more positive ones. Using Francis’ excursus on the Good Samaritan as a backdrop, I explore the narrative of the compassionate cleric who tends to the physical and psychological wounds of society’s outcasts in moving pictures from Hollywood’s Golden Era through Neorealism to contemporary world cinema. This image of the believer at work “rebuild[ing] our wounded world” is central to the current Pope’s understanding of Christian mission. In this paper I argue that cinema provides evidence for a long-standing tradition of indiscriminate charitable work by members of the clergy with off-screen analogs, such that Francis’ inclusive vision of fraternal love among all peoples is less a radical reform and more a timely renewal of an ideal Christian praxis in response to a growing climate of intolerance and alienation within our global community.