From time to time, cinephiles can be guilty of hyperbole. Maybe it isn’t entirely true that Martin Scorsese understands the human condition better than Homer, Shakespeare, or Austen. Perhaps it is a bit much to call the studio heads of RKO history’s greatest monsters for taking away The Magnificent Ambersons from Orson Welles. And it just might be overstating things to say that all of human suffering could be ended if everyone just sat down and watched Singin’ in the Rain together.But when we said that cinemas were holy places, we were right on the money. Because that’s an opinion shared by the pope himself. During an address on November 15, 2025, Pope Leo XIV said (via IndieWire) it is “wonderful to see that when the magic light of cinema illuminates the darkness, it simultaneously ignites the eyes of the soul.”cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});“Indeed, cinema combines what appears to be mere entertainment with the narrative of the human person’s spiritual adventure,” continued His Holiness. “One of cinema’s most valuable contributions is helping audiences consider their own lives, look at the complexity of their experiences with new eyes, and examine the world as if for the first time. In doing so, they rediscover a portion of the hope that is essential for humanity to live to the fullest. I find comfort in the thought that cinema is not just moving pictures; it sets hope in motion!”While it might be surprising to hear these words said by the actual pope, claims about the holiness of art are certainly nothing new. Composer J.S. Bach would sign his compositions with S.D.G. for the phrase “Soli Deo Gloria” (“to the glory of God alone”), and famously declared, “All music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the soul’s refreshment.” T. S. Eliot, while ironically disparaging explicitly Christian literature in an essay entitled “Religion and Literature,” urged devout readers to see that all legitimate forms of art contained in them a call for higher purposes, claiming that “knowing what we are and what we ought to be, must go together.” Even outside of explicitly Christian terms, we’ve long known that art inspires in us larger feelings, whether that be something to be feared, as in Plato’s Republic, and sought out, as in William Wordsworth’s description of poetry in “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.”For the Christian in particular, art is holy because it can relate the Imago dei, the image of God in humanity. By learning about one another as people, we can care about them, see beyond just our own situation and desires. This is what the famed critic Roger Ebert meant when he compared movies to “a machine that generates empathy.”That idea is echoed in Pope Leo’s phrasing. Movies are motion pictures, images that neither stay static for mere contemplation, nor can they be subsumed by the demands of narrative or exposition. Each picture signifies a thousand words, even if the person being pictured speaks specific words that only make sense to one plot. Steve Rogers might be talking specifically about his friend Bucky’s brainwashing at the climax of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but the way Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan move their faces signifies a connection deeper and more universal than that particular plot. Ariel crests the water at the climax of “Part of Your World” in The Little Mermaid because that’s what the choreography demands, but the tenor of her voice and the motion of her rise combine to stir something inspirational in us all.In particular, the pope refers to movies as setting hope in motion, which is true even when a particular plot doesn’t explicitly invite such hope. David Fincher‘s Seven ends with Morgan Freeman as Detective Somerset reciting lines from Hemingway—”The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for”—before concluding, “I agree with the second part.” Even the most optimistic reading of those lines has to contend with the bleak world in which Somerset lives, a world in which people do good through torture and a genuine innocent ends up beheaded. But as we watch him move back into that dark, endlessly rainy night, we viewers get to leave the theater and enter into the real world, one that we can fight for to make into a fine place.Whether you go to movies to see God reflected in the actors or you go just to see the pretty faces, the same is true. Movies show us humanity in motion and illuminated, help us see the best parts of ourselves, even when projecting the worst. Theaters are holy places, not just for those of us working on our next online screeds about Christopher Nolan, but for all humans.The post The Pope Is Right: Making Movies Is Godly Work appeared first on Den of Geek.