I give my verdict in a review at Beliefnet, for those with absolutely nothing better to do, and for those who don't care about spoilers.Because Ireveal all...The short version: The movie is hardly anti-Catholic, and the Osservatore Romano verdict ("harmless entertainment") is pretty much spot on. But one thing I don't reveal, because I can't ascertain just from Google, is whether hero Robert Langdon's charge that Pope Pius IX had all the penises knocked off the classical statuary in the Vatican in 1857 in the so-called"Great Castration"is remotely true. It seems to be an urban legend, though it has late Renaissance antecedents.But I can't prove this charge against Pio Nono. The poor guy gets blamed for everything. And it would be a greater slander than any Illuminati plots.

David Gibson is the director of Fordham’s Center on Religion & Culture.

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