In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis, Lots of Countries, Always Waving
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-
One of few disturbing sequences in Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis follows the pope’s “penitential” visit to Canada in the summer of 2022.
The purpose of the trip was to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s Indigenous residential school system. The video of the pope in his white cassock and skull cap, amid Indigenous leaders in ceremonial feathered headdresses, was an eye-catching symbolic moment.
It’s immediately followed by brief, archival black-and-white footage of Indigenous children, sitting in their classes, brushing their teeth before bed, or being taught to dance.
How many of these children survived, and what happened to those who made it to adulthood? The pacifying imagery of official reconciliation feels chillingly inadequate.
The sequence is an anomaly in Rosi’s non-judgemental film, which was mostly edited from television broadcasts over the past decade. These clips are stitched together by sequences of the camera stationed behind the pontiff, standing in the back of a white Jeep Wrangler, as he rhythmically waves, left and right, like a Bobblehead figure, to spectators lining the streets.
Other scenes follow Pope Francis down on the ground among the moist-eyed throngs, touching hands, stroking heads, and kissing babies. It looks exhausting. The pope may be the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics and thus one of the most powerful people in the world, but he is also an elderly man who struggles to raise himself out of a chair. (The 86-year-old pontiff is currently in hospital with a lung infection.)
In Viaggio — which is neither a Vatican public relations film nor an exposé — is essentially a chance to go along for the papal ride. Director Rosi, a 59-year-old New York-based Italian, has won major awards in Europe for his observational films of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea, the conflict at the Mexican-U.S. border and Mideast war zones, plus regions of suffering where the pope, too, has journeyed over the past decade. Rosi’s unobtrusive approach offers scraps of evidence for both believers and skeptics.
The believers can interpret the Argentinian-born pontiff as a transformative figure, a conscience to the world, who has prioritized inter-faith dialogue, compassion, and justice for the poor. We see him in Juarez, Mexico, where the corpses of drug cartels’ victims lie on the streets, as he meets with prisoners who kiss his hands. We also see him challenge the status quo before the U.S. congress where he describes the military-industrial complex as “money drenched in blood.”
Skeptics will focus on the contradictions: his insistence on transparency around the pedophile priests while supporting the disgraced Chilean bishop Juan Barros Madrid. When a reporter on the papal plane asks what message he would like to send to Russian president Vladimir Putin, the humanitarian and the diplomat are in conflict. The pope reacts defensively, citing his public condemnation of war but deflecting a chance to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
If you’re on the sidelines, the film will remind you the head of the Catholic Church has a complicated symbolic brief: International figure of conscience, real-world diplomat, and head of an ancient religious institution struggling with the baggage of its past.
None of this adds up to a deep or compelling examination of the papacy. Think of it more like a wave from the motorcade on the way by.
In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis. Directed by Gianfranco Rosi. Opens at Toronto’s Hot Docs Cinema and Vancouver’s Vancity on March 31.