Martin Scorsese is on tour in Italy after attending the 76th Cannes Film Festival, and over the weekend the director met with Pope Francis and announced that he will make a film about Jesus.

“I responded to the Pope’s call to artists in the only way I know how: I create and write a script for a film about Jesus,” Scorsese announced during a conference in the Vatican, according to reports in the Italian media. “And I’m about to start doing it,” the director added, hinting that it could be his next film.

Before attending the conference – titled “The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination” – Scorsese and his wife Ellen Morris met with Pope Francis at the Vatican, according to Variety.

The conference was organized by the Jesuit publication “La Civiltà Cattolica” and Georgetown University. Antonio Spandaro, publisher of the religious magazine, said that during his informal conversation with the director, Martin Scorsese referred to his films and personal anecdotes and explained “that he was moved by the appeal of the Holy Father “allow us to see Jesus”».

Martin Scorsese with the Pontiff

As for the film references, during the discussion, Scorsese mentioned his admiration for “The Gospel according to Matthew” by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Martin Scorsese also spoke about the meaning of his 1988 epic The Last Temptation of Christ and “the next step in his investigation of the Jesus figure” as presented by the smaller-scale 2016 drama Silence about with the persecution of Jesuit Christians in 17th century Japan. The film was screened in 2016 at the Vatican.

Pope Francis is the first Jesuit Pope and is known to have joined the Jesuit order hoping to become a missionary in Japan.