The book addresses the Catholic Church's cinema-related activity, focusing on the Italian case during the period between the 1930s and the 1960s. During these years, the Church played a central role in the political and cultural life of the country and, the cinema being a burgeoning medium at that time, Catholics engaged in a series of interventions aimed at fully and strategically exploiting its potential.
The publication of the encyclical Vigilanti Cura (1936), in which Pope Pius XI invited Catholics to influence film production not just through censorship, but also by becoming directly...