Posted on 12/15/2007 3:51:34 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
ROME Italian film and opera legend Franco Zeffirelli has agreed to become an image consultant to Pope Benedict XVI, the director said in an interview published Saturday.
The pope does not have a "happy image," Zeffirelli told La Stampa, adding: "Coming after a pope as telegenic as John Paul II is a difficult task."
Benedict, elected in 2005, "comes across coldly, which isn't suited to his surroundings," Zeffirelli said, adding that the pope's wardrobe "should be reviewed."
The pope's robes are "too sumptuous and flashy," the 84-year-old director of "Jesus of Nazareth" and "Romeo and Juliet" told the daily La Stampa. They should instead reflect "the simplicity and sobriety seen in the other echelons of the Church," he said.
The 80-year-old German pope "doesn't smile much, but he's an intellectual," Zeffirelli said.
The pope also wants Zeffirelli be a consultant to the Vatican "responsible for defending the faith in cinema, the image of the sacred," the director said.
"The Holy father is very aware that the Church's cinematographic communication is in ruins today. As a Christian, I cannot stand by while this disaster unfolds," Zeffirelli said.
"I should have the full authority and the Holy Father would not deny me to denounce the continual blasphemies committed with the intention of popularising the Christian message," he said.
"You have to pay attention, as shown by the fallout from Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' which irreversibly harmed the memory of millions of people," the director added.
"Images have invaded ... values that used to belong to preaching and the written word," he lamented. "Advertising language has become ubiquitous in the religious domain."
Zeffirelli has brainstormed ideas with the pope and senior Vatican officials, but will get to work in earnest after his staging of Puccini's "Tosca," which opens at the Rome Opera on Jan 14, he said.
I have a feeling the Vatican will be denying this.
It's gotta spice things up.
He woud have used his position to condemn “The Passion of the Christ” for antisemitism?
Next thing you know, he’ll be advising the Pope to wear alpha male brown suits.
Ugh.
1) - Redesign Papal Robes...
C’mon, Frankie is 84. He went to see the Pope and Bennie told him he was a nice guy and everything and then Frankie thought he was the Pope’s new image maker.
I hope so. I like the Pope’s colorful robes. He looks like a Pope should.
So do all of the freshmen!
I was a fan of Cardinal Ratzinger before I was a fan of Pope Benedict. He is an absolutely brilliant thinker, maybe even more so than PJP II, who I think had three PhDs and wrote some of the best encyclicals in history.
Most of his books are published by Ignatius Press. I’d recommend anyone who wants a first impression to look at his early book, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, which has earned praise from Evangelical theologians.
Get some classy looking fish hats.
Pope Benedict recently had some carefully chosen and thoughtful things to say about the current climate change debate which are reproduced here.
But he’s nuts.
Kudos to Pope Benedict. That was well-spoken.
What he writes is what is so meaningful to me.His clarity and the beauty of his words on hope and other things lifts me.
The wisdom of appointing a cardinal in struggling Iraq and his statements about global warming that recognizes the human hatred in some of it’s adherents.We should listen to him.
I should care what he wears?
Yes, I saw his comments on climate change. And then there were his earlier comments at Regensburg on the difficulty of talking with Muslims—and modernists/relativists.
Maybe he could be Secretary of State in his spare time.
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