February 21, 2025
Meg Tilly in “Agnes of God” (IMDB)
John Dougherty
At this year’s Academy Awards, Edward Berger’s twisty Vatican drama “Conclave” has eight nominations including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor for Barry Fitzgerald, who played Father Fitzgibbon. (He was also nominated for Best Actor; the only time an actor has been nominated twice for playing the same character in the same film.)
That same year, Ingrid Bergman was nominated for playing Sister Mary Benedict in “The Bells of St. Mary’s” and Gregory Peck for playing a priest in “The Keys of the Kingdom” (1944). A few years later, Bergman would marry Italian director Roberto Rossellini (following a brief and scandalous affair), and they had three children—including Isabella Rossellini.
In these films and others of the time, priests were portrayed as “virile, athletic, compassionate, wise,” according to Charles R. Morris in American Catholic. The fact that they were celibate didn’t prevent them from being inspirational figures, played by some of the most famous (and desirable) men in Hollywood. The films portrayed religious life as one of immense sacrifice and meaning. “These are talented, attractive people who have made big sacrifices for the love of God,” Morris writes, “and they are better than the rest of us for it.”
This mid-century popularity of Catholic films in Hollywood occurred thanks to several factors, including the still-exotic nature of Catholicism to majority-non-Catholic audiences and the dynamically cinematic elements of Catholic religious practice. It is also meaningful that this period coincided with the heyday of the Production Code, a censorship document that determined what got made in Hollywood. In American Catholic, Morris (in line with other scholars) suggests that the deluge of positive Catholic films may have been an attempt by the studios to stay in the good graces of the Production Code Administration’s vigilant and pugnacious director: devout Catholic Joseph Ignatius Breen.
