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By Sophia Yan
November 16, 2025 — 6.19am
Pope Leo was presented with a bracelet from Cate Blanchett and a personalised New York Knicks basketball jersey from Spike Lee as dozens of prominent figures from the world of cinema and television visited the Vatican on Sunday (AEDT).
The Apostolic Palace hosted more than 100 actors, directors, producers and writers, whom the Pope greeted as “witnesses of hope, beauty and truth” in today’s world.
Actress Cate Blanchett leaves the Vatican after an audience with Pope Leo. Credit: AP
The pontiff told his guests that cinema represented “a popular art in the noblest sense, intended for and accessible to all,” and that it prompts “audiences [to] consider their own lives, look at the complexity of their experiences with new eyes and examine the world as if for the first time”.
Cinema “sets hope in motion”, he said, adding: “When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console, but challenges.”
As well as Blanchett, a double Oscar winner, and Lee, whose Hollywood directing and writing career spans almost 40 years - including an Oscar for best adapted screenplay - guests included Adam Scott, the star of the television series Severance, and actors Chris Pine and Viggo Mortensen. Italians Monica Bellucci, Dario Argento and Matteo Garrone were also in attendance.
“His words were extraordinary, and I wish cultural ministers around the world would take heed. He talked about compassion and leaning into the problems of the world,” Blanchett told journalists after the audience.
Film Director Spike Lee and his wife Tonya Lewis Lee at the Vatican in Rome on Saturday.Credit: AP
Lee, an ardent New York Knicks fan, presented the Pope with a basketball jersey chosen specially for him.
“He’s the 14th Pope, so (the jersey) was number 14. And the back, it said Pope Leo,” the BlacKkKlansman director said. He added that the Knicks had three players from Villanova University in Pennsylvania, which the Chicago-born Pope attended.
Before the event, the Vatican said in a statement that Pope Leo “expressed his desire to deepen dialogue with the world of cinema…exploring the possibilities that artistic creativity offers to the mission of the Church and the promotion of human values”.
Cate Blanchett is interviewed by journalists after meeting the Pope.Credit: AP
The Vatican revealed that the pontiff’s favourite films included It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music, Ordinary People, and Life is Beautiful.
Pope Leo has attracted a number of high-profile visitors to the Vatican since he became leader of the Catholic Church in May. First through the door was Jannik Sinner, the Italian world No.1 tennis player, who presented the Pope with a racket.
Al Pacino met Pope Leo in June, becoming the first actor to be granted an audience with him.
Meanwhile, the Vatican has returned 62 artifacts of the indigenous peoples of Canada as part of the Catholic Church’s recognition of its role in the suppression of indigenous culture in the Americas.
The items include an Inuit kayak, wampum belts, war clubs, masks, and other traditional clothing and items, and were part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection.
Pope Leo told his guests that cinema represented “a popular art in the noblest sense, intended for and accessible to all.”Credit: AP
The artefacts, along with whatever provenance information the Vatican has, are to be taken to the Canadian Museum of History in Quebec, where experts and indigenous groups will try to identify where the items originated and decide what to do with them.
“For First Nations, these items are not artefacts. They are living, sacred pieces of our cultures and ceremonies and must be treated as the invaluable objects that they are,” Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, an advocacy organisation for indigenous groups in Canada, said last month as preparations were finalised for the returns.
The Vatican’s ethnographic collection has been the subject of controversy, particularly as the broader global museum debate has grown regarding the return and restitution of cultural and historical artefacts taken from their original lands and peoples.
Pope Francis began return of museum items
Negotiations on the return of the items accelerated after 2022, when Pope Francis met with indigenous leaders who travelled to the Vatican to receive his apology for the church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, where children were physically and sexually abused.
During the trip, the visitors were shown some pieces in the collection, and subsequently asked for them to be returned, a request that Pope Francis supported on a case-by-case basis.
Most of the items in the collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for an exhibit in 1925.
The Vatican has insisted they were “gifts” to the then pope, but experts and indigenous groups have questioned whether such offerings were given freely, given the power and influence of the Catholic Church at the time.
Pope Leo, the first US-born pope, and the first from North America, is due to make his first international trip as pontiff later this month.
He will visit Turkey, a trip that includes a pilgrimage to Iznik, to commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the first Council of Nicaea, a key event in Christian history.
He will then visit Lebanon, and is expected to deliver a message of peace and hope to a country – and wider Middle East region – that has been rocked by ongoing political and religious tensions.
The Telegraph, London
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