Gianfranco Rosi’s In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis takes us to many of the fifty-three countries the globetrotting Holy See has visited during the thirty-seven trips he’s made during the nine years of his papacy. This insightful, inspiring documentary is much more than a mere travelogue. Rather, In Viaggi (“traveling” in Italian) follows Pope Francis as he uses his status as the titular head of the Catholic church to spread a moral message, bringing guidance and solace to the adherents across the globe.
In the film, Pope Francis’ first stop is Lampedusa, a small Italian island only seventy miles off the coast of Tunisia. Tens of thousands of migrants have flocked there, seeking safety and better lives in the European Union, as Rosi recounted in his 2016 film Fire at Sea, which was nominated for the Best Documentary Academy Award. At Lampedusa, the pontiff holds forth on one of the causes closest to his heart, the plight of refugees, calling them “these brothers and sisters.” The Pope reproaches anti-immigrant sentiment in the West: “We are a society that has forgotten how to weep,” he says, decrying “the globalization of indifference.”
At Varginha, Brazil, in 2013, shortly after he took office, Vatican City’s first South American sovereign expounds the gospel according to Francis: “It is not a culture of egoism and individualism that builds a better world. It’s a culture of solidarity—we are all brothers and sisters.” In Havana, Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936 at Buenos Aires, exhorts the multitude to “Dream that the world can be different with you.” In Chile, Francis inspires crowds who suffered under the cruel U.S.-backed tyranny of General Augusto Pinochet: “Losing freedom doesn’t mean losing the ability to dream. None must be deprived of dignity. It is more contagious than the flu.”
The Pope also visits the White House and Congress—in what his fellow Argentine Che Guevara called “the belly of the beast.” Holding the free world colossus to account, the multi-lingual Francis cites the shining examples of two Americans, the Catholic Workers’ Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and influential author. He calls to “end many conflicts in the world. Why are deadly weapons flown to those who do untold suffering? This money is drenched in blood. Stop the arms trade, the transshipment of weapons,” the Pope righteously demands in America, the planet’s biggest arms merchant.
The Pope also visits the White House and Congress—in what his fellow Argentine Che Guevara called “the belly of the beast.”
2021 finds Francis in Iraq, which he laments has been “ravaged for so many years.” The Holy See flies over Mosul in a chopper, seeing firsthand the devastation wrought by combat. Like a latter-day General Sherman, he proclaims: “War is madness. It overturns everything. Its development plan is destruction,” and likens arms dealers to the Biblical figure of Cain, who slew his brother Abel.
Visiting Armenia, Francis steps on Turkish toes by using the word “genocide,” causing Istanbul to recall its ambassador to Vatican City, which is an independent state located inside Rome. And in Japan, he mourns the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In Viaggio follows Francis on the road to the Philippines, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Palestine, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Malta, and beyond. The portrait that emerges of the first Pope from the Global South is much more than that of a jetsetter, but rather of a deeply compassionate man on a mission. According to Catholic doctrine, Popes are the apostolic successors to Saint Peter, and it’s evident from In Viaggio that, while Francis may be divinely inspired, he is not divine, per se, but rather all too human.
Over the course of almost a decade, the now eighty-six-year-old Francis increasingly shows signs of frailty. In Iraq, where he meets with the Shia Muslim cleric Ali al-Sistani, he is wobbly, walking unsteadily. More importantly, although the Pope is supposed to have the power of papal infallibility, Francis openly apologizes onscreen and admits mistakes. In Chile, the Pope publicly expresses regret for asking for “proof” regarding Bishop Juan Barros, who was embroiled in a child sex abuse scandal. .
Francis humbly seeks forgiveness from Canada’s First Nations’ tribes for the often church-run “residential schools that systematically marginalized the Indigenous people” and for “the suppression of culture and language and a colonial mentality.”
In 2010, the Eritrean-born Gianfranco Rosi directed the documentary El Sicario, Room 164, about an assassin for Mexico’s drug cartels. With In Viaggio the versatile director has turned his lens from hitman to holy man, using film to illumine a Pope in perpetual motion, crusading for peace, the poor, victims of natural and manmade disasters, stateless seekers of survival and for a decent standard of living, and much more.
One of the attributes of the cinematic medium are close ups that are, on the big screen, larger than life, and Francis’ face seems to sincerely emanate kindness, goodness, benevolence, and empathy. To make In Viaggio, Rosi racked up thousands of miles accompanying the Pontiff on many of his pilgrimages, shooting original material. He combined this with extensive footage from the Vatican Media and Cineteca Di Bologna Archives. Editor Fabrizio Federico, who collaborated with Rosi on Fire at Sea, winnowed 500 hours of film down to the eighty-two-minute chronicle that is essentially a motion picture tribute to Pope Francis upon the tenth anniversary of his election to the papacy on March 13.
Fallible as he may be, Francis prays in a chapel: “Mankind will be together or not at all . . . . Forgive us Lord for war. Stop us Lord, stop us,” he implores, advocating a theology that seems much closer to the original tenets of a Christianity wherein we are all our brothers’—and sisters’—keepers. For what it’s worth, this lifelong atheist was moved and impressed.
In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis is in Italian, Spanish, and English with English subtitles and will be in theaters and On-Demand beginning March 31.