c. 2005 Religion News Service

ROME _ Between takes, actor Jon Voight walked the movie set with a string of rosary beads laced between his fingers, occasionally raising his hand to make the Catholic sign of the cross at a captivated extra or onlooking nun.

The cameras had stopped rolling, but Voight was still in action.

Voight, a Catholic, isn’t the first actor who tried to step into the shoes of Pope John Paul II, a thespian himself who transformed the papacy into one of history’s most telegenic roles. But Voight might be the first to take an almost devotional approach to the part.

He has perused John Paul’s encyclicals, read his poetry and committed documentary footage to memory in an effort to gain command of the late pope’s body language.

“I feel a little bit like I’m a protector,” he said, expressing concern that John Paul could be “misinterpreted” in the hands of someone of lesser talent, not to mention faith.

As Voight stepped into the rain on a dreary afternoon, an aide appeared at his side carrying a large black umbrella to shield his papal vestments from the storm.

Long gone are the days of “Midnight Cowboy,” the 1969 film that features Voight as a male prostitute fresh off the farm. The actor now finds himself moving in more ecclesial circles as the star of the two-part CBS miniseries “Pope John Paul II.”

On Nov. 17, he and other cast members will attend a screening of the film with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Anyone not part of the papal entourage must wait until Dec. 4 and 7, when the two-part TV miniseries first airs.

By then, nine months will have passed since the death of John Paul. But the rush to interpret, or misinterpret, the late pontiff’s legacy already will be in full swing.

CBS’s most direct competition will come in the form of “Have No Fear: The Life of John Paul II,” a two-hour ABC production also expected to air this television season.

And both films come on the heels of “Karol: A Man who Became Pope,” the Hallmark Channel production that portrayed the pontiff coming of age under Nazi and Soviet oppression while flirting intermittently with death and the opposite sex.

Of the three, however, the CBS series has come the closest to receiving an official Vatican blessing.

According to Luca Barnabei, whose company Lux Vide co-produced the series, former papal secretary and current Archbishop of Krakow Stanislaw Dziwisz was involved in the script’s development as was papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls. Navarro-Valls and Barnabei are both members of the conservative Opus Dei organization, which John Paul designated as his personal prelature.

“The Vatican knows this company, and I believe we are making a service to the church in making this kind of movie,” Barnabei said.

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Flexing its high level contacts, Lux Vide arranged to have exclusive footage of the Sistine Chapel shot for scenes depicting the 1978 conclave that elected Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as pope.

The production’s ties to Dziwisz, meanwhile, secured access to Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, where Wojtyla was made bishop.

While quick to wax the production’s insider credentials, the makers of “John Paul II” are reticent to discuss what kind of insight the series has to offer beyond the visual splendor of Vatican interior decoration.

Barnabei said the series will not delve into the more controversial aspects of the papacy, such as John Paul’s clash with liberation theology in Latin America and his response to the sex abuse scandal in North America.

The film will instead portray John Paul as a hero of the 20th century, flashing backward and forward from the 1981 assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square to scenes of young Karol Wojtyla, played by Cary Elwes, canoeing in the Polish countryside, and of Voight taking calls from world leaders as the newly minted pope.

Director John Kent Harrison said viewer interest in “John Paul II” will be driven by curiosity rather than controversy.

“They want to see how the pope gets up in the morning,” Harrison said, adding: “It’s not what you would expect.”

For Voight, the key demographic is right here in Rome. Recalling a push he made to play John Paul in the 1980s, Voight hinted that the late pope might have been a fan.

“They passed my name in front of John Paul and he said, `Yes, Jon Voight would be good for it,”’ Voight said, adding: “He understood me a little bit.”

As John Paul, Voight went face-to-face with Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca in a scene that reenacted John Paul’s 1983 visit to the prison cell of his would-be assassin.

Hours later, he found himself 22 years older, hunched over a wooden crucifix in a mock version of the papal chapel. Layers of makeup caked his face, which was twisted into a Parkinsons-like rictus.

Sister Gloria Marissa, whose convent was on loan to CBS for the day, hovered at the edge of the scene, studying Voight’s expression. She was convinced.

“He has all the right wrinkles,” she concluded.

MO/JL END RNS Editors: To obtain photos of Jon Voight as Pope John Paul II, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.