As part of the Modern Roads to Rome Series the University of Noter Dame Rome and Center for Italian Studies are delighted to invite you to a screening of Roberto Rossellini’s Francesco giullare di Dio (The Flowers of St. Francis), 1950, introduced by a lecture by Prof. Tomaso Subini (Università degli Studi di Milano Statale).
Through a religious film by the director of Rome, Open City, the Italian Catholic world sought to counter left-wing neorealism with a Christian-inspired neorealism. At the same time, clergymen specialized in the cinematographic apostolate and the Order of Friars Minor regarded the film as an opportunity to place the powerful medium of cinema at the service of religious propaganda. In turn, the Holy See believed the film could contribute to the re-Christianization of Italian society during a period marked by great hope, between the Christian Democrats’ victory in the 1948 general elections and the Jubilee of 1950. Why, then, do the archives of the principal institutions of Church governance – the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Congregation of the Holy Office – contain two substantial, recently declassified files that cast doubt on the film through censures and anathemas?