By Katie Yoder, OSV News
Award-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese is debuting his latest work on Fox Nation: A new docudrama exploring the lives of the saints.
“I’ve lived with the stories of the saints for most of my life, thinking about their words and actions, imagining the worlds they inhabited, the choices they faced, the examples they set,” Scorsese said of “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” in a press release. “These are stories of eight very different men and women, each of them living through vastly different periods of history and struggling to follow the way of love revealed to them and to us by Jesus’ words in the gospels.”
Scorsese serves as the executive producer, host and narrator of the docuseries that premiered on Nov. 17, his 82nd birthday. The eight-episode show reaches across time and space to follow heroic men and women who dedicated their lives to God no matter the cost. Each hour-long episode focuses on a different saint, beginning with St. Joan of Arc. Other episodes will feature St. John the Baptist, St. Sebastian, St. Maximillian Kolbe, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Moses the Black and St. Thomas Becket.
The docudrama will be released in two parts by Fox Nation, a subscription streaming service by Fox News Media. The first four episodes air weekly beginning on Nov. 17 and the last four episodes will become available in spring 2025.
Each episode invites viewers to travel back in time and watch the saints come to life, with Scorsese narrating between scenes. The first episode stars Liah O’Prey as St. Joan of Arc, a French saint who fought in the Hundred Years’ War against the English while guided by the voices and visions of saints. The young peasant woman, celebrated for liberating Orléans and leading Charles VII of France to the throne, died at the stake in 1431 after being convicted of heresy. She was 19 years old.
In the episode, Joan appears as a determined, confident woman even while she is dragged into court and put on trial. She’s a human who makes mistakes, but always strives for heaven. Flashbacks reveal her humble background and her journey to become a saint. Along the way, viewers will hear lines taken directly from St. Joan of Arc’s trial and examinations.
“I do nothing except by revelation,” St. Joan of Arc’s character, played by O’Prey, repeats the saint’s recorded words. At another point, when asked if she believes she is in a state of grace, she responds, “If I am not, may God put me there. And if I am, may God keep me there.”
Scorsese breaks from his narration to express his own admiration for St. Joan of Arc by the end of the episode: “At the heart of absolutely everything, is her faith, her absolute unshakable faith.”
This series is one that he has wanted to create for more than four decades.
In a 2017 interview with Father Antonio Spadaro, SJ, former editor in chief of the journal La Civiltá Cattolica, Scorsese, who was raised Catholic and considered becoming a priest, said that while he is not a “regular churchgoer,” he is “most comfortable as a Catholic.”
“I believe in the tenets of Catholicism,” he said. “I’m not a doctor of the church. I’m not a theologian who could argue the Trinity. I’m certainly not interested in the politics of the institution. But the idea of the Resurrection, the idea of the Incarnation, the powerful message of compassion and love — that’s the key. The sacraments, if you are allowed to take them, to experience them, help you stay close to God.”
In that same interview, he revealed that, after directing the 1980 film “Raging Bull,” he wanted to next “explore a question that has always obsessed me: what is a saint?”
“My idea was to make a series of films about different saints,” he said. Later, he realized, “it didn’t seem possible to make these pictures, these studies, of the lives of the saints. But I never lost my interest in characters who tried to live their lives in imitation of Christ, and I knew that I would return to that one day.”
His fascination with the saints dates back to his childhood when he spent time in St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in New York City, which was a sanctuary for him, he told the AP while speaking about the new series. He became curious about the saints after seeing statues of them.
“If a saint is something that is designated as special, for many of us as children, we thought that therefore the saints must be superhuman,” he commented in a recent interview with The New York Times. “But no. The whole point is that it’s human.”
Katie Yoder writes for OSV News from the Washington area.
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