Vatican Still Angry at Dan Brown

Posted on June 16, 2008

The Vatican is still quite peeved with Dan Brown. In fact, it's still so mad that it has banned Tom Hanks and Ron Howard from shooting any scenes from the upcoming film Angels & Demons at the Vatican or at any Catholic churches in Rome.

The Vatican has banned the makers of Angels & Demons, the latest Dan Brown thriller to be filmed, from shooting scenes not only in the Vatican but in any church in Rome on the ground that it is "an offence against God" and "wounds common religious feelings".

Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, head of the Vatican's Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that the author had "turned the Gospels upside down to poison the faith. It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into mendacious films in the name of business."

Father Marco Fibbi, spokesman for the diocese of Rome, said: "Normally we read the script, but this time it was not necessary. The name Dan Brown was enough." The Vatican fiercely condemned both the novel The Da Vinci Code and its film version, which starred Tom Hanks as the Harvard professor Robert Langdon.

Hanks also stars in Angels & Demons which, like The Da Vinci Code, is directed by Ron Howard. Published before The Da Vinci Code — which suggested that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and had children — Angels & Demons revolves around a plot by a sinister elite known as The Illuminati to seize control of the papacy during a conclave to elect a new Pope.

"The name Dan Brown was enough"? That's pretty harsh. No doubt Ron Howard will find an acceptable substitute site for filming. After all, the Vatican couldn't stop the filmmakers from shooting the exteriors of the churches in question because they had permission from the local authorities.

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