Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, an influential Vatican official, has spoken highly of the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion.” After seeing it in Rome, Cardinal Hoyos rejected the charge that it is anti-Semitic. Indeed, he said it was inspiring: “I felt moments of deep spiritual intimacy with Jesus Christ.” He encouraged all Catholic priests to see the movie, and hoped that all Christians would see it as well.
Commenting on this is Catholic League president William Donohue:
“The big winner in this is Mel Gibson. The big loser is the ad hoc committee of scholars who condemned the movie without seeing it. Regarding the latter group, the most embarrassed must be the Catholic scholars. They were the ones who read a stolen script of the screenplay and then set themselves up as the supreme authority on the New Testament. Now they look rather silly.”
