Pope Denounces Film on Virgin Mary

VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II today stepped into the controversy over French director Jean-Luc Godard’s film on the Virgin Mary, saying it distorts and reviles the spiritual significance of the mother of Jesus.

The film, “Je Vous Salue Marie” (“Hail Mary”), portrays Mary, often shown in the nude, as the teen-age daughter of a gasoline station manager who becomes pregnant without having had sex.

Joseph is a cab driver who devours science-fiction paperbacks and the Archangel Gabriel is a foul-mouthed drifter.

The Pope said in an unusually strong public statement that he deplores the film, now showing at a Rome movie house. He said in a telegram to Rome Cardinal Ugo Poletti that he would be “spiritually present” at a prayer service against the film today at Rome’s Basilica of St. John in Lateran.