Just in case you had any doubt about how Italian Martin Scorsese is, Deadline reports that the Goodfellas and Taxi Driver filmmaker has scored a private audience with Pope Francis in connection with a special screening of Scorsese’s new movie, Silence, for an audience of 400 Jesuits. The screening is set to take place in Rome on Thursday, but the visit will happen tomorrow morning at the Vatican at 8:45 a.m. local time, before the Pope’s weekly general audience at 10:30 a.m.
Even accounting for the Pope’s commute to his front stoop, an hour and 15 minutes is a pretty substantial chunk of time. And although, according to the Vatican press office, the discussion will center on Silence, starring Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield as two Jesuit missionaries in 17th-Century Japan, there’ll probably be time to chat about some other stuff as well. Like why Scorsese has to ruin such nice movies with all that violence and profanity, for example, or why a loving God would allow Joe Pesci to record a rap. The Last Temptation Of Christ—and its condemnation by the U.S. Catholic Church upon its release in 1988—will presumably hang awkwardly in the air when some neophyte cardinal foolishly brings it up.