Papal Ban?

Should "The Successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles," appear on a cinema screen from which the images of Mae West and Jean Harlow have just faded?

"It is unthinkable," Pope Pius XI was reported to have said last week, "that pictures of Christ's vicar or his sacred functions should appear on the very screens on which films offending the fundamental principles of Christian morals and common decency are projected."

When U. S. distributors lately offered to release a compilation of shots taken during the 1933-34 Holy Year, the Pope is supposed to have declined curtly, ordered that it be shown only in religious institutions.

U. S. Catholic offices and news services were unable last week to confirm the report of the Pope's ban. Observers recalled that last year a papal film called The Shepherd of the Seven Hills was widely and commercially exhibited (TIME, Aug. 21, 1933). Currently the Pope appears and speaks in Man of Courage, a full-length commercial picture dedicated to the glory of Fascism and Mussolini.

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