Pope Leo and My Beloved Little Movie Theater
Cinemas as the "beating hearts of our communities"
On November 15, 2025, Pope Leo XIV hosted an array of filmmakers and festival heads for an event celebrating movies and the theaters that play them. Among other remarks, he said cinemas are the “beating hearts of our communities”. Coincidentally on the same day, I went to see Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) accompanied by a full orchestra and choir in a freshly remodeled single-screen theater first built in 1925. While a deeply moving event in and of itself, it also marked the next chapter in a tumultuous but passionate love affair with a place that taught me the power of art and community. This is both the story of that century-old movie palace and of how theaters and the fantasies projected in them can bring us closer to life and our Lord.
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