Pope John Paul II, The Miniseries

CBS will air a four-hour mini-series of the life of Pope John Paul II on December 4 and 7. Yesterday at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI watched a special screening with Italian subtitles, with about 6,000 people in attendance. At one point, the audience applauded when an actor who played Cardinal Ratzinger appeared on the screen. English actor Cary Elwes plays the young Karol Wojtyla and American actor Jon Voight plays the older Pope John Paul II. Voight, who was raised Catholic, was greeted personally by the Holy Father.

Here is the official report from the Vatican.

VATICAN CITY, NOV 18, 2005 (VIS) - Yesterday evening in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, in the presence of the Holy Father, a screening was held of the film "Pope John Paul II." The film was produced by the Lux Vide company, and by RAI (Italian State Television) in collaboration with other European television networks and the American broadcaster, CBS.

After the screening, Benedict XVI expressed his thanks to Ettore Bernabei, president of Lux Vide, and to others who collaborated in making the film, which opens with the attempt on John Paul II's life in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981.

"Watching this film," said the Holy Father, "has renewed in me and, I think, in everyone who had the gift of knowing (John Paul II), a sense of profound gratitude to God for having given the Church and the world a Pope of such an exalted human and spiritual stature.

Benedict XVI went on: "Over and above any specific evaluation, I feel the film constitutes further proof ... of the love people hold for Pope John Paul, and of their great desire to remember him, to see him again, to feel him close. And beyond its superficial and emotive aspects, this phenomenon clearly has an intimate spiritual dimension, which we here in the Vatican see every day watching the multitudes of pilgrims who come to pray, or just to pay rapid homage, at his tomb in the Vatican Grottoes.

"That affective and spiritual bond with John Paul II, which became even closer during the period of his final illness and death, was not interrupted. It has never been broken, because it is a bond between souls, between the great soul of the Pope and the souls of innumerable believers; between his fatherly heart and the hearts of countless men and women of good will who recognized in him a friend, and a defender of man, of truth, of justice, of freedom and of peace. All over the world, many people admired in him above all the coherent and generous witness to God."