By Peter Pinedo
Washington D.C., Mar 21, 2023 / 13:30 pm
Disney will release a new documentary April 5 titled “The Pope Answers,” airing an extended conversation between Pope Francis and 10 members of Generation Z, discussing the Church’s stance on LGBTQ+ issues, abortion, clergy abuse, feminism, and more.
Shot in Rome and directed by left-leaning Spanish filmmakers Jordi Évole and Marius Sanchez, the documentary is entirely in Spanish and will be released exclusively on Hulu in the U.S.
Évole’s production company Producciones del Barrio (Neighborhood Productions) is known for such documentaries as “Mr. Trump, Pardon the Interruption,” investigating the impact of Trump’s border policies on Hispanic communities, and “What You Give Me,” which explores the meaning of life with the late Spanish musician Pau Dones.
Évole is also known for hosting, directing, and producing the Spanish news show “Salvados” (“Saved,” 2008-2019), which sparked controversy for its criticism and satiric humor directed at the Catholic Church. In one episode, Évole visited Opus Dei’s Torreciudad Shrine and was filmed serving as an altar boy at Mass.
The trailer for “The Pope Answers,” which you can watch here, shows an informal conversation between Francis and a small group of young people discussing some of the Church’s most controversial positions and some of society’s most difficult problems.
Among the questions fielded by the pope:
“Do you know what a nonbinary person is?”
“If I weren’t a feminist, would being a Christian be better?”
“What do we do with these women [who have had abortions], in the Church, as an institution?”
At the end of the conversation, Francis says: “I’ve learned a lot from you, it’s done me a lot of good and I thank you for what you’ve done.”
In a joint statement published March 15, directors Évole and Sanchez said the documentary presented “a unique opportunity to bring together two worlds that normally do not touch, to see one of the most influential people in the world have a dialogue with a group of young adults whose lives sometimes clash head-on with the postulates of the Church.”
This is not the first time Évole has worked with Francis. Some of the pope’s most well-known statements have been from interviews with Évole.
In a 2019 interview on Évole’s “Salvados” show, Francis clarified the Church’s position that homosexual “tendencies are not sin … sin is acting, of thought, word, and deed, with freedom.”
Speaking on Évole’s pandemic-era show “The Évole Thing” in 2020, the pope likened the coronavirus to nature “giving us a jolt to take charge of taking care of nature.”
“There’s a saying that you surely know: God always forgives, we forgive now and then, nature never forgives, fires, floods, earthquakes,” he said.
In an extended one-on-one interview with Évole in 2019, Francis stood firm on his position that abortion can never be acceptable at any point, even in the cases of rape.
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Francis told Évole he could understand the desperation the woman in such a scenario might feel, but that “it is not lawful to eliminate a human life to solve a problem.”
“Is it permissible to eliminate a human life to solve a problem? Is it permissible to hire someone to eliminate [the child]?” Pope Francis asked.
