VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II, making a rare intervention in a film controversy, charged Tuesday that a French movie depicting Virgin Mary in the nude and Joseph as a cab driver 'distorts and slanders' Christianity.
Director Jean-Luc Godard's film entitled 'Je Vous Salue, Marie,' with the English title of 'Hail Mary,' tells the story of a 1980s Mary, played by Myriem Roussel, who is the daughter of a gasoline station owner.
The story shows the angel Gabriel flying in by jet to announce that Mary will become the mother of God. Fueling the controversy is the depiction of Joseph as a cab driver, nude scenes involving Mary, and language considered blasphemous.
The pope Tuesday charged the movie 'distorts and slanders the spiritual significance and historic value' of 'fundamental themes of the Christian faith' and 'profoundly wounds the religious sentiment of believers.'
A Vatican source said it is unusual for a Catholic pontiff to intervene personally in such a matter but noted the Polish-born John Paul has 'a deep and fervent devotion to the virgin.'
The film, target of stink bombs and hymn-singing protests when it premiered in France early this year, opened to equal outrage in the Italian capital last Thursday after Minister of Entertainment Lelio Lagoria signed a censor's permit.
Crowds of angry Italian Catholics, including followers of traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and members of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, have demonstrated daily outside the movie theater in a square facing the lower house of parliament.
But the film also has its defenders, including members of parliament who demanded that Prime Minister Bettino Craxi explain a brief delay in the opening, and a 75-year-old Jesuit who is a Dante scholar.
The Rev. Egidio Guidobaldi told a news conference Monday he considers the movie a 'superb artistic celebration of Pope John Paul II's matrimonial catechesis (teaching) in St. Peter's Square.'
John Paul stated his condemnation in a telegram that Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, Vatican secretary of state, sent in the pope's name to Cardinal Ugo Poletti, vicar of Rome.
The telegram read:
'The supreme pontiff joins in the unanimous censure by the faithful of the Rome diocese over the showing of a cinematographic work which, dealing with fundamental themes of the Christian faith, distorts and slanders the spiritual significance and historic value and profoundly wounds the religious sentiment of believers and the respect for the sacred and for the figure of the Virgin Mary, who is venerated with such filial love by Catholics and is so dear to Christians.'
