Martin Scorsese announces new film about Jesus after meeting Pope Francis

Martin Scorsese is ready to venture outside his comfort zone.

During a press conference in Rome, the 80-year-old filmmaker revealed that he’s about to start working on a new film about Jesus.

“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 told Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica (The Catholic Civilization). “And I’m about to start making it.”

At the conference, titled “The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination”, Scorsese met with Pope Francis in a brief audience in Rome.

Jesus occupying the crux of Scorsese’s filmography is not unusual; he has been associated with a couple of controversial projects like his 1988 epic The Last Temptation of Christ and most recently, Silence, starring Liam Neeson and Andrew Garfield.

It’d be safe to say that his films are a loose depiction of his own faith, about which he talked during the press conference.

Antonio Spadaro, editorial director of the Catholic magazine extended his gratitude to the director for “accepting the invitation to join us of La Civiltà Cattolica and Georgetown University - along with his wife and daughter” on Twitter.

He also quoted the Pope, who preached to the 40 poets and writers present at the conference over the weekend, saying, "This is your work as poets, storytellers, filmmakers, artists: to give life, to give body, to give word to everything that human beings live, feel, dream, suffer, creating harmony and beauty.... 

"Will they criticize you? All right, carry the burden of criticism, also trying to learn from criticism. But still, don't stop being original, creative. Do not lose the wonder of being alive.”