‘Da Vinci’ undermines faith, survey claims

Last week, the Philippines’ powerful Catholic bishops gave priests guidelines on how to refute the book’s plot and reminded parishioners that the novel was a work of fiction. But they stopped short of calling for the film to be banned. But some younger Filipinos were angry at what they saw as faith intruding on entertainment.

“Something such as religion should not be a standard for whether we should let movies be played,” said Peterson Poon, 16. “It annoys me that I have to buy a DVD.”

Such local efforts come amid the Vatican's vocal effort to dissuade viewers worldwide from flocking to what church officials view as a misleading and heretical piece of work. The latest message came Monday, when the Vatican's culture minister portrayed the popularity of “Da Vinci” as a shocking indication of mass ignorance and the “voluptuous pleasure” the media take in promoting works with no basis in truth.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, told Europe 1 radio he had no objection to people seeing the film if they understand it is fiction, but many would watch this “nonsense” and think that it was true.

‘Shocking and worrying’
The film of the best-selling novel, which says Jesus had a child with Mary Magdelene and the Roman Catholic Church hushed this up, debuts at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday.

Poupard is the Vatican’s highest authority on cultural issues after Pope Benedict.

“This is a shocking and worrying cultural phenomenon that reflects, on the one hand, the ignorance of millions of people and, on the other, the voluptuous pleasure the media take in promoting products that have nothing to do with the truth,” the 75-year-old French-born cardinal told the radio station.

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Italy’s most senior cardinal, Camillo Ruini, also lambasted the film’s plot as “fantasies and falsifications” but said he believed people were more fascinated by truth than illusions.

“If it is clear this has nothing to do with truth and it amuses you to go see it, why not?” he said when asked if movie-goers should boycott the film, which stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.

In recent weeks, cardinals have urged everything from a boycott of the film by Catholics to legal action against both the novel and the film.

But the dust-up hardly dissuaded “Da Vinci's” stars from taking a turn in the spotlight. Tom Hanks and his fellow cast members set off Tuesday for Cannes on the high-speed Eurostar train.

The special train, nicknamed The Da Vinci Code for the occasion, was in pursuit of a world record. Going nonstop over the 883 miles from London to the festival in southern France would put it into the Guinness World Records book.

Hanks, who plays Robert Langdon in the film, posed for pictures Tuesday at London's Waterloo station with Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Paul Bettany, Jean Reno and Alfred Molina, director Ron Howard and author Dan Brown.

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