Legendary film director Martin Scorsese met with Pope Francis this weekend during a post-Cannes tour of Italy and announced a project centered on Jesus.
The film about Jesus comes in the wake of an appeal issued by the leader of the Catholic Church to artists around the world, according to a report.
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"I have responded to the pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus," Scorsese said Saturday at a Vatican press conference. "And I'm about to start making it."
Scorsese and his wife, Helen Morris, were granted a private audience with Pope Francis prior to the director's attendance at The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination conference, according to the report.
Held by the Jesuit publication La Civilta Cattolica and Georgetown University, Scorsese discussed how the pope's call "'to let us see Jesus' moved him," La Civilta Cattolica Editor Antonio Spadaro said.
The Academy Award-winner cited his own films in the discussion and opened up about his appreciation for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, the report noted.
At the convention, Pope Francis challenged the artists to help people expand their knowledge of God.
“I have loved many poets and writers in my life, among whom I think especially of Dante, Dostoevsky and others still," the pope said. "The words of those authors helped me to understand myself, the world and my people, but also to understand more profoundly the human heart, my personal life of faith and my pastoral work, even now in my present ministry."
"Continue to dream, to be restless, to conjure up words and visions that can help us interpret the mystery of human life and guide our societies toward beauty and universal fraternity," he said.
Artists should break conventional bounds and be creative in their portrayals, the pope said.
"Always embrace, poetically, the anxious yearnings present in the human heart, lest they grow cold and fade away," he told artists.
"Doing so enables the Spirit to act, to create harmony within the tensions and contradictions of life, to nurture our passion for goodness and to foster the growth of beauty in all its forms, that beauty which finds privileged expression in the arts."
Scorsese is no stranger to religious films, with his projects including 1988's The Last Temptation of Christ and 2016's Silence being well-known throughout the religious world.
The latter, which tells the story of Jesuit priests in Japan, was screened at the Vatican.
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Specific details relating to Scorsese's film on Jesus have not been confirmed, the report indicated.
Scorsese's tour of Italy will also include screenings of his work, a class for students at Rome's Centro Sperimentale film school, and various speaking engagements.