With the election of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, interest in all things Vatican has surged — and Conclave, the Oscar-nominated thriller set inside the Sistine Chapel, has found new life on the streaming charts. As I wrote in my review, it’s an aesthetic achievement: crisply made, handsomely lit, well-acted. But like Cabrini before it, it treats Catholicism less as a faith than as mise en scène — a backdrop upon which the filmmakers project a contemporary drama.

It was a missed opportunity — not because every film about the church requires a theological lecture, but because Catholicism has long understood the power of the arts to shape the soul. For centuries, it helped form the Western imagination — not only through divine teaching, but through beauty: commissioning the greatest works of painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, and using art to summon meaning from mystery. In the 20th century, that heritage found its way into the performing arts.

St. John Paul II began as an actor in Kraków’s underground theater. Long before the world knew him as Pope Francis, young Jorge Mario Bergoglio was sneaking off to the cinemas of Buenos Aires. In 1995, the Vatican recognized this legacy by releasing a list of 45 significant films — a small but meaningful affirmation that cinema, like poetry or painting, belongs within the Church’s broader cultural patrimony.

With that in mind, I offer a list of twelve films — in honor of the apostles — worth watching with the emergence of a new pope. Six are overtly religious: portraits of priests, nuns, mystics, and martyrs. The other six are more secular, but unmistakably Catholic in sensibility — films shaped by a sacramental view of the world, where sin has weight, beauty has purpose, and redemption is within reach.

Some of these films were made by devout believers. Others came from doubters, lapsed Catholics, or accidental pilgrims. But all of them share a certain reverence — not for the institution per se, but for the things it still understands best: mystery, mortality, and the moral life.

This brief list is also born of personal gratitude for the church — especially for the Marist Brothers, faculty, and staff at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, who didn’t just teach me how to think critically, but also how to care about what’s worth thinking about.

These twelve films honor that tradition. They’re not all tidy. Some are even messy, but the best of them, like my time at Columbus, have a quiet way of forming you. As Pope Pius XII wrote in 1955, when the Church was actively engaging the moral weight of cinema, the best films offer “a ray of God” to those willing to see it.

That’s the spirit behind these selections — and I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. Habemus Papam!

Nosferatu (1922, F. W. Murnau)

This silent masterpiece, the lone horror film included in the Vatican’s official film list, presents a dark cosmology in which sacred symbols still retain real, apotropaic power. The cross holds real power, not as ornament but as a force that repels evil. What unfolds isn’t a tale of neurosis, but of spiritual threat. At a time when much of modern art has grown embarrassed of the supernatural, Nosferatu still dares to speak in the church’s oldest register: spiritual combat.

Heaven Can Wait (1943, Ernst Lubitsch)

Lubitsch’s most delightful moral comedy turns unexpectedly catechetical. The film asks what constitutes a life well lived — not in terms of wealth, status, or even scandal, but in fidelity, humility, and the quiet virtues known only to God. It’s a reminder that eternal judgment may not look like what the world expects, and that grace often hides in small, unpretentious acts of love.

Rome, Open City (1945, Roberto Rossellini)

Filmed in the immediate aftermath of the Nazi occupation, this neorealist landmark shows the church standing with the oppressed, bearing witness to truth, and refusing to abandon the flock when the wolves draw near. That Pope Francis named it among his favorite films is no surprise — its priest is not just a character, but a presence: bruised, bloodied, and eucharistically real.

Black Narcissus (1947, Powell & Pressburger)

Few films better capture the fragility of religious life when detached from the source of its strength. Set amid sublime Himalayan vistas, the film becomes a high-gothic meditation on the limits of willpower, the temptations of pride, and the silent erosion of discipline in isolation. Beneath its visual splendor lies a cautionary tale about the necessity of interior formation and spiritual communion.

Flowers of St. Francis (1950, Roberto Rossellini)

Here is a cinematic homily drawn from the heart of the Franciscan tradition — luminous, simple, and wholly attuned to the Gospel’s call to poverty and joy. Rossellini doesn’t treat the lives of the saints as relics, but as a living charism: a vision of holiness that is disarming in its gentleness and radiant in its rejection of vanity. In an age obsessed with spectacle, this film offers reverent stillness.

I Confess (1953, Alfred Hitchcock)

Though not theologically exhaustive, this is Hitchcock’s most overtly Catholic work — the product of a director who, despite drifting from the Church, retained a sacramental imagination. The film is rich in symbolism, from the priest’s cassock to the confessional box itself, framing the drama in visual language the faithful will intuitively recognize. The priesthood is depicted with rare dignity: as a vocation marked by absolute moral responsibility. In a culture suspicious of clerical integrity, the film quietly affirms the nobility of those who still uphold it.

La Strada (1954, Federico Fellini)

Few filmmakers matched Fellini’s instinct for the tragicomedy of grace — and though his relationship with the church was complicated, his films are unmistakably steeped in Catholic longing. La Strada is a roadside Stations of the Cross, seen through the eyes of a poor, childlike woman whose innocence and suffering reflect a kind of hidden sanctity. Love, loss, and divine mercy walk the margins of a harsh and indifferent world.

The Gospel According to Matthew (1964, Pier Paolo Pasolini)

This is a work of radical fidelity to Scripture itself. Pasolini, a Marxist and lapsed Catholic, created what L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, has called the best film ever made about Jesus. Filmed in the language of Italian neorealism, it strips the Gospel of spectacle, allowing the words of Christ to thunder across time with unadorned power. When you set the Word to cinema without embellishment, the result is revelation.

A Man for All Seasons (1966, Fred Zinnemann)

Bishop Robert Barron’s favorite film — and for good reason. St. Thomas More’s martyrdom is portrayed not with melodrama, but with the calm resolve of a man whose conscience is formed by Church teaching, fortified by grace, and governed by reason. This is Catholic moral clarity at its finest: a story of fidelity not just to principle, but to personhood — to God, who is Truth itself.

Hugo (2011, Martin Scorsese)

At first glance, it’s a children’s film; in truth, it’s an Aristotelian parable about telos, memory, and the sacramentality of art. Through a child’s eyes, Scorsese explores vocation — not as careerism, but as an interior alignment with one’s created purpose. Wounds are mended not by therapy or ideology, but through beauty, wonder, and the healing power of shared memory. His Catholic imagination, unshaken even when detached from the Church, imbues the film with reverence for the human soul’s longing to be seen, known, and redeemed.

Calvary (2014, John Michael McDonagh)

A hard and holy film — not for the faint of heart, but for those willing to confront the wounds of the Church without cynicism. Here, the priest is not an administrator or a moralizer, but a shepherd walking among the spiritually maimed. The parish is a battlefield, the confessional a place of deep anguish. And yet, like the church herself, he stays. A cinematic expression of Pope Francis’s “field hospital” vision of the Church.

Silence (2016, Martin Scorsese)

This list closes with Martin Scorsese’s Silence — perhaps the greatest film about faith in modern times. It enters the dark night of the soul and refuses easy answers. A deeply Catholic meditation on suffering, fidelity, and the struggle to discern God’s will amid persecution, the film has been misunderstood by some as endorsing apostasy. But as Fr. John Muir of Catholic Breakfast explains in this reflection, it captures the anguish and ambiguity that mark real spiritual discernment. This is not a film to watch lightly — but to contemplate, even pray with.