Life meets Hollywood: Upcoming film on pope draws ire of biographer

Published: 2004-01-09

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican usually braces itself when the latest Hollywood version of the life and times of notable religious figures gets ready to hit the screen. But a fresh maelstrom may be building over an upcoming made-for-TV movie about the life of Pope John Paul II. This coming October, the film biopic "Karol" is scheduled to debut on Silvio Berlusconi's Channel 5 -- one of the Italian prime minister's three channels in his Mediaset empire. The TV "fiction" was meant to be based on the Vatican-approved book, "Stories of Karol: The Unknown Life of John Paul II" written by Gian Franco Svidercoschi. But Svidercoschi -- after reading the film's first treatment -- has denounced the direction the screenplay has taken, saying "it invents too much and doesn't present the man as he really was."

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