A Twenty-First-Century Gospel: Jesus at the Vatican in Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope

Paolo Sorrentino called his series The Young Pope “a thriller of the soul.” In this religio-political drama, Sorrentino explores the fortune of the Catholic Church were a young, intransigent, irritable American cardinal elected pope. Building his story line around the life of Christ, with intertextual citations to the New Testament and visual allusions to Christian art and Jesus movies, Sorrentino offers a twenty-first-century gospel to remind the viewer that the gospel is not only about tolerance. By presenting his young pope as the returned Christ, and not as a Christ figure, he shows that conservatism is equally present with liberalism in its message.