While awards season has The Two Popes and HBO has The New Pope (it premiered Jan. 13), Hollywood had one old pope visiting Sept. 16, 1987.
As part of a two-day trip to L.A., Pope John Paul II, then 67, told showbiz leaders they could be “a force for great good or great evil,” according to The Hollywood Reporter, when he addressed 1,200 of them at the Registry Hotel (now the Hilton Universal). Bob Hope, Charlton Heston and Loretta Young were among the stars attending.
The pontiff was introduced by MCA chairman Lew Wasserman, who was widely regarded as the most powerful man in Hollywood. A joke at the time was that the assembled execs “didn’t know whose ring to kiss.”
More than 300,000 spectators lined the roads when he rode his Popemobile through downtown en route to a mass with 63,000 Roman Catholics at Dodger Stadium. The LAPD deployed 5,800 officers plus 13 helicopters. Besides being impressed by the logistics, THR noted that the Polish-born Vicar of Christ was the first non-Italian to hold the job in 450 years; that his original career choice was acting; and that during World War II he’d helped found the Rhapsodic Theater in Krakow, where he performed as the “astrological sign Taurus (clad in a bull’s head) in a production of The Moonlight Cavalier.”
His Holiness was two hours late for the gathering, but the execs politely waited, and everyone was on their best behavior. “The crowd had been instructed not to stand when the pontiff entered,” THR noted, “yet everyone did.”
The bishop of Rome’s speech got a varied response: Irving Azoff said it was “a very moving experience,” but Peter Bogdanovich told The New York Times that he thought the pontiff should have been tougher on the industry. “What struck a bell was that the pope was saying even the smallest decision we make can have an unknown effect,” the director said. “And that nudity opened the floodgates.”
The above comes from a Feb. 1 story in the Hollywood Reporter.
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I was at Dodger Stadium for the Pope’s visit. When the popemobile came into the stadium, at that moment I felt a flood of grace pour down upon me. It was one of the more miraculous moments of my life. Above all else, I felt as if God was telling me this man was a saint. Years earlier I felt a similar blessing when Cardinal Manning entered the room to say Mass at McClaren hall, a juvenile detention center. He too was a saint of God, IMO.
I wonder if anyone has ever felt a tremendous flood of graces pouring down on them, when Pope Francis enters a room?? Well– they should! A long time ago, prior to the Council, it seems that graces were much more plentiful in our Church– and Catholic laymen, nuns, and clerics, were often closer to God, filled with grace, and at various degrees of sanctification! Some amongst us were even quietly being led by God, towards Sainthood!!