Vatican Best Films List

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On March 17, 1995, almost exactly 10 years before his passing, Pope John Paul II addressed a plenary assembly of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications, which that year observed another anniversary of particular importance to its own mission and to the Holy Father’s heart: the centenary of the motion picture.

“Since the first public audience in Paris viewed the moving pictures prepared by the Lumière brothers in December 1895,” the pope said, “the film industry has become a universal medium exercising a profound influence on the development of people’s attitudes and choices, and possessing a remarkable ability to influence public opinion and culture across all social and political frontiers.”

Later that year, the pontifical commission provided an important reference point to Catholics interested in assessing the cinema’s “many worthwhile productions during the first hundred years of its existence”: a list of 45 films that has come to be known as the Vatican film list.