In statements to the British newspaper The Guardianthe 80-year-old American noted that he had “answered the Pope’s call to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a script for a film about Jesus.”
Martin Scorsese has met Pope Francis on other occasions: in October 2018 during a meeting in Rome with young people and the elderly, and in 2016, at the presentation of his film Silenceabout the persecution that the Jesuits suffered in Japan in the 17th century, and which also raised controversy.
Scorsese has also directed films such as The Aviator, The infiltrators y the Irishamong other.