Mar 14, 2004 / 22:00 pm
The leaders of the Bishops Conference of Brazil gave their full support to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” saying the film is faithful to the Gospels and rejecting reports the bishops were planning to oppose it.
“This is not an anti-Semitic film and it is very faithful to the Biblical passages on the Passion and death” of Jesus Christ, said Cardinal Geraldo Magellan Angelo, President of the Bishops Conference.
The Cardinal added that director Mel Gibson “sought to portray the passion and death in a very valid way, with much intensity” and “literal reproductions of Biblical texts.”
Together with the Conference’s vice-president, Bishop Antonio Celos de Queirós and Secretary General Bishop Odilo Pedro Scherer, Cardinal Agnelo said the movie was not ant-Jewish because “Jesus was a Jew, and Mary, our Mother, was a Jew.”
Ask multiple times if they would recommend the film, the bishops it was a decision for each individual to make, and that reading the Bible and seeing the film would be enough to form an opinion.
“Mel Gibson has translated the narratives into images which are shocking,” said Bishop Scherer, adding that “one only has to imagine 40 lashings (on a person), that is extremely violence.”