Holy Mess: Anthony Quinn in The Shoes of the Fisherman

SteynonLine ^ | May 10, 2025 | Rick McGinnis

[Twotone]

The news of this week was summed up in a phrase: Habemus papam. The election of a new Pope was major news for the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, of course, but the internal workings of the Vatican hold a strange, almost universal appeal, and even after two millennia the papacy is appreciated as a political institution as much as a religious one.

Everybody, Catholic or not, suddenly had an opinion about the candidates and the factions fighting over each ballot behind the locked door of the Sistine Chapel, and the most confident analyses were, as ever, offered by non-Catholics – agnostics and atheists of every degree sharing expert opinion about a religion they're happy to ignore or mock in the long years between conclaves. In the end the winner was a dark horse among the papabile and not one of the front runners confidently listed when the week began.

People claimed they'd been watching a recent Netflix film based on a novel by Robert Harris to learn about how papal conclaves work. (Even more troubling was a rumour that cardinals in Rome had been watching it.) It would have been the most obvious choice for this week's film, but the "shock twist" ending is well known and I'd rather write about another, much older film, about another papal conclave, made back before movies about the Catholic Church were more basically sympathetic.

The Shoes of the Fisherman came out in 1968, at the end of a long cycle of Hollywood films that didn't just obey the old Production Code's insistence on treating religion respectfully; they were imbued with a fascination with the rituals and mysteries of the Catholic Church and made with the certainty that there was a potential audience of millions...

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TOPICS: History; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: anthonyquinn; movies; thepope

[dpetty121263]

Seen that movie, spoiler alert the Pope sells off the entire holdings of the Church to feed the poor and spread the Gospel...

[Fiji Hill]

I saw that in the theater in 1969 and found it boring.

[PJ-Comix]

The latter died in the gulag in 1950 but Slipyj was released from the camps the same year West published his book...

Was he released or did he sort of Slipyjed out?

[Dr. Sivana]

[Teilhard de Chardin is] considered far from controversial today

Not true. Traditional Catholics have no use for him. His work has not aged well. A little bit pantheist, a little bit Darwin, a little bit Hegel. Bleagh!

[woofer2425]

I liked the movie, it was an insight to how a new Pope is chosen. I liked the story too. It was a bit long time wise.

[Racketeer]

Same here. I really enjoyed the movie.

[Rockingham]

That is the old “pilgrim church” delusion beloved of modernists, that the Catholic Church can shed its physical assets and its history and become something new and gleaming that the world loves for the sincerity of poverty. At its best, the magnificence and pageantry of the Vatican and the Papacy provide a stage that draws the attention of the world to Christ and His life and message.

[dpetty121263]

Pretty decent movie, problem now is the Catholic Church is totally infiltrated by Satan.