After the screening of his Killers of The Flower Moon film at the Cannes Film Festival, Martin Scorsese made his way over to the Vatican City in Italy. At a conference called the Global Aesthetics of Catholic Imagination, Scorsese talked about religion and film with Pope Francis. After his visit, he announced he was going to make a film about Jesus, per Variety.

“I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” Scorsese announced, according to reports. “And I’m about to start making it.”

The conference, organized by Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica and Georgetown University, consisted of conversation from Scorsese about anything from his films, to his personal life, and “How the Holy Father’s appeal ‘to let us see Jesus’ moved him.”

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As for cinematic references, Scorsese's 1988 epic The Last Temptation of Christ and of “the subsequent step in his research on the figure of Jesus.” Because of this research, his 2016 film Silence came about. The story followed the persecution of Jesuit Christians in 17th-century Japan. This film screened in the Vatican because Francis is the first Jesuit pope and joined the Jesuit order with the goal to become a missionary in Japan.

Organizer of the conference and Jesuit publication, Antonio Spadaro, tweeted his thanks for the director's time. Spadaro also quoted Pope Francis, recalling their time at the conference: “This is your work as poets, storytellers, filmmakers, artists: to give life, to give body, to give word to everything that human beings live, feel, dream, suffer, creating harmony and beauty…. Will they criticize you? All right, carry the burden of criticism, also trying to learn from criticism. But still, don't stop being original, creative. Do not lose the wonder of being alive.”