Life of Pius XII to hit the big screen

Pius XII is one of the more studied popes of the 20th century. Fate had it that his papacy came about during one of the most difficult times of the last hundred years: World War II.

Seventy years later, scholars and people around the world are still debating just what Piuss role during the war entailed.

Oscar Clemente is convinced that the pope played an important role in saving Jewish lives during the war. So much so, that hes making a movie about his life.

Oscar Clemente
Producer, Pope Pius XII
We are in the middle of a big fight, because the Catholics say yes, the Jewish people say, No, it was not true. What I can do, Ill let people decide if it was or not.

Clemente is the producer of the film Pope Pius XII, a $45 million project currently in preproduction stages in the United States.

Because he wants to convey an accurate portrayal of Pius XII, Clemente has read and analyzed over 150 texts on the pontiff, including documents in the Vatican Secret Archives.

Oscar Clemente
Producer, Pope Pius XII
Every single piece of the movie has a little light in somewhere. We read something in the original books, we read some things in the original papers that the pope wrote in that time and we put it together and made a film."

Making a film around the sensitivity of the Holocaust is not an easy thing. For decades after his papacy his legacy was debated. Some said he didnt do enough to save innocent lives. Others, like Oscar Clemente think otherwise.

Oscar Clemente
Producer, Pope Pius XII
We leave the people to understand what we really want to show them. So, you see the movie and you can say its true or its not true. I just want to tell the truth. This is my point of view.

Though there is no set release date for the film just yet, Oscar and his team hope it will be no more than a year and a half before their film on one of the more influential popes of the 20th century hits the big screen.

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[sbreathnach100]

@gennarog3 And I thought he only like dictators like Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Pavelik, Salazar and every junta throughout the world. His hatred for other folk spread from Rome, Spain, Italy, Germany, Croatia, Portugal, et. al... and he loved women and homosexuals as well as jews. All that world power, all those concordets, and not one Jew saved, not one unequivocal statement in their defence..... You Mother's Father's Uncle was a ..... !

[SpencerBenedict2nd]

@FRAGIORGIO1 PART SEVEN B: Jesuit History

... of which every member became in reality an irredeemable slave.; The gradation of ranks was only a gradation in slavery; and so perfect a despotism over a large body of men, dispersed over the face of the earth, was never before realized.

The sentence of their abolition was passed by the senates, and monarchs, and statesmen, and divines, of all religions, and of every civilized country in the world. Almost every land has been stained and torn...

[FRAGIORGIO1]

@SpencerBenedict2nd Read in Wikipedia the story of Monsignor (you use French spelling) Tiso and how he helped keep Slovakia independent for a while and after the Vatican told him to stop collaborating with Nazi demands for shipping out Jews, he found the Nazis invaded Slovakia and did what they wanted to. The Ustasha (you use French spelling again!) were Croatian fascists, and Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb was persecuted by the Nazis, and later by the Communists as well.

[FRAGIORGIO1]

@SpencerBenedict2nd LOL Do you know what Hegelian dialectic even is, Spence? Jesuit? Oh, no! The worst accusation! Har har. You are so 16th century.

[FRAGIORGIO1]

@SpencerBenedict2nd The Nazis demanded that the Catholic politicians not actively oppose the Nazi government in the concordat. Pius XI consented in order to gain some freedom for the Church, since its goals were not political but for the relative freedom of operation for the Church without state interference. The Nazis were already tightening the screws on everybody, in case you didn't know. What was the ideological orientation of the Mercure? Do you know? No? hmmm.

[FRAGIORGIO1]

@sebreathnach You have No reference to Pacelli's letters against the Nazis when he was in Germany. What an ignoramus, full of accusations without serious bases.

[FRAGIORGIO1]

@SpencerBenedict2nd Communism was Christian in Acts of Apostles, remember? Indians in Paraguay lived in their tribal communities under the protection of the Jesuits. When they were suppressed by the Portuguese and Spanish governments, the Indians were subjected to terrible exploitation and cruelty. See the movie "The Mission" for an idea. Communism made gains due to the social exploitation in many countries, such as China, Guatemala, Italy, Russia, not because Catholic.

[FRAGIORGIO1]

@sebreathnach Franco was no "tin-pot" dictator. He was part of a popular reaction to the destruction of 80 churches and the murdering of priests by the Communists in Spain during the early 1930s. You are a tool of Marxist propaganda. Vietnam was under French rule then and the French did not ask Pius for anything nor do his will. you accuse, but do not know what you are talking about. The Vatican opposed all racial, religious, and ethnic hatreds then seething.

[FRAGIORGIO1]

@randalland1  You mean because he preached Jesus Christ, denounced ethnic, racial, and religious bigotry, and saved 860,000 Jews?

[FRAGIORGIO1]

@2332southside He compromised in order to gain some liberty and rights for the Church. The concordat of 1929 with Italy won recognition of the Vatican's independence of the Italian state. The concordat of 1933 with Germany gave some independence to the Catholic Church just as Hitler was trying to unite all the state Protestant churches into one national church he could control better, and was in relation to the anti-Catholic Kultur Kampf of Bismark in the 1800s.