Over the Easter weekend, a new film will document what sets Francis apart from other popes: “He can ask for forgiveness”

Pope Francis is leading religious celebrations during the Roman Catholic faith’s holiest week just days after being released from hospital. As part of today’s Good Friday service, he participated in a passion celebration in the St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

On Easter Sunday he will lead Mass in the Basilica and then pronounce the traditional blessing “urbi et orbi” from the central balcony of the St. Peter’s Basilica. Hundreds of thousands or more come for the blessing on St. Peter’s Square expected, a proof not only of the spiritual importance of the event, but also of the Pope’s popularity.

Among Francis’ admirers is Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi, whose new documentary In Viaggio is now running in New York and is available on VOD platforms such as Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube and Google Play.

“He’s kind of like a pope [recognizes] There is a need for radical change within the church,” Rosi told Deadline. “Is he successful? Not always. is he trying Yes. Is this pope different from other popes? I think he is.”

Rosi is named after Wim Wenders (Pope Francis: a man of his word) and Yevgeny Afineevsky (Francesco).

“I’m not Catholic, I’m not a believer,” says Rosi. “But maybe that helped me make this film even more free. I wanted to make a film without ideology, without a theological approach. I wanted to portray a man rather than a pope.”

The title of the documentary – In Viaggio – translates to “journeys” or “on the way”, and in fact the focus is on the dozens of trips the pope made outside of Rome during the 10 years of his papacy. In the first of these in the film, he travels to Lampedusa, an island in the Mediterranean that has become a staging area for migrants trying to get to Europe from North Africa and the Middle East. Thousands of people died during the perilous journey, engulfed by the water, a tragedy captured in Rose’s film fire at sea.

“Who among us mourned the death of these brothers and sisters?” the pope, dressed in purple robes, asked his audience at an open-air event. “Which of us cried for those people who were on the boat? For young mothers carrying their babies? For those men who were looking for a way to support their families?

The Pope adds discouragingly: “We are a society that has forgotten how to cry, to share suffering. The globalization of indifference has robbed us of the ability to cry!”

At a time of growing nationalism around the world – India, Brazil, Russia, the United Kingdom and some other parts of Europe, even the United States – the pope pushed for a broader view of humanity and a “culture of solidarity” . Rosi sees the pope as filling a moral vacuum.

“Somehow, at this point in history, there is no head of state who can speak to the whole world,” he notes. “[Francis] talk to believers, non-believers, Christians, Muslims, Jews [people]… This is what moved me about this Pope. He is a man of good will.”

Rosi credits Pope Francis for speaking out for human dignity and against armed conflict. “Every war stems from injustice,” the pope says in a speech in the documentary.

But with civil wars tearing apart countries on the African continent and the Russian invasion of Ukraine claiming tens of thousands of lives, the pope’s peaceful message fell on deaf ears.

“We start the movie [with the pope] say, “Dream, dream, dream.” And then this dream turns into a nightmare,” says Rosi. “His decline and his defeat is our defeat, but also the pope’s defeat. He goes around trying to change things that way. Nothing changes. The world is getting worse… So the film is a portrait of a Pope, but also a portrait of a lonely man.”

One area in which the pope has been successful, many would say, is restoring credibility to a church badly damaged by the global scandal of priest sexual abuse of minors. The film shows how the pope has changed his approach over time – from protecting some clergy accused of mishandling abuse allegations to more punitive measures. For example, Pope Francis initially defended how a bishop in Chile, Juan Barros Madrid, responded to a case of sexual abuse by a priest in that country. But in 2018, Francis reversed course and accepted Barros Madrid’s retirement. And the pope apologized for the way he handled the matter.

“This man, this pope, can ask for forgiveness,” says Rosi, “not only in the name of the church, but also in his own name.”

Rosi filmed with the Pope during trips to Malta and Canada, but the documentation’s source material comes mainly from the Vatican archives – hundreds of hours of video shared with Rosi. In contrast, Rosis’ previous films include don’t turn around And fire from the seaconsists virtually exclusively of self-made material.

“[Usually] I’m the one who’s always behind the camera and discovers a story by looking through a viewfinder,” notes Rosi. “And right there I can understand the story. Here, for the first time, I had to stand back and bear witness, bear witness to images that were not made for me. And I had to get used to this language. I had to pick specific moments that spoke to me.

The Pope’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who died in December, resigned as Pope just over ten years ago. Francis has only one lung (one was removed due to an infection when he was young) and has had other ailments and now regularly uses a wheelchair. Rosi says he believes Francis will not hesitate to retire if he feels his health requires it.

“He will know when to get out of there,” he says. “He won’t have a problem with that.”

Rosi says he and his film crew met the Pope at the Vatican a few weeks ago.

“He had fantastic energy, jokes, words for everyone. And before we left the room, we gave him the DVD of the movie that he’ll never see, because he said he never watches things he stars in,” says Rosi. “Of course he knew everything about this film. But he said something very important. He said: “Be brave and always take risks. Take a risk and be brave.” And then he said: “We are surrounded by too many conservatives. There are too many conservative people around us. So always take risks and be brave.’”