TV movie on Pope John Paul II to air again this weekend

Aug 23, 2005 / 22:00 pm

By popular demand, the heroic, true story of Pope John Paul II returns to television. The four-hour movie, “A Man Who Became Pope,” will air again on the Hallmark Channel Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. (ET).

The Aug. 15^th  U.S. premiere of the film set a weeknight audience record for the cable channel.

Filmed on location in Krakow, Poland, and in the Vatican City, the film features an international cast, including Piotr Adamczyk as Karol Wojtyla and Raul Bova as Fr. Tomasz Zaleski, Karol’s close childhood friend and a martyr to the Nazis.

Giacomo Battiato directed the film and it was produced by Pietro Valsecchi.

“A Man Who Became Pope” was warmly received when screened at the Vatican on May 19.

“The film presents scenes and episodes that, in their severity, awaken in the viewers an instinctive ‘turning away’ in horror and stimulates them to consider the abyss of iniquity that can be hidden in the human soul,” said Pope Benedict XVI. “At the same time, calling to the fore such aberrations revives in every right-minded person the duty to do what he or she can so that such inhuman barbarity never happens again.”

Vatican press spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Pope John Paul II had seen the film in its entirety in a private viewing before his death and was “very impressed” with the portrayal and “appreciated the many scenes” from that period of his life.