Harvey Keitel a Jesuit?

Today that wonderfully Ignatian blog Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit notes that Harvey Keitel will be playing the main role in a Polish-language film telling the story of two American Jesuits who attempt to remove the relics of St. Andrew Bobola, S.J. (seen here) from the Soviet Union in the 1920’s. This is something of more than passing interest to me, because I know exactly who the two Jesuits were: Fathers Edmund A. Walsh and Louis J. Gallagher. Walsh, who had founded Georgetown’s Foreign Service School in 1919, was asked by the Vatican to head its relief work in Russia during the famine of 1921-1923 that killed some five million people. While he was there he also operated as an unofficial Vatican ambassador to the Soviets, working to keep the churches open and the clergy out of prison. The relief was a great success, and led to the creation of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, but Walsh could do little about the government crackdown on religion. While he was there he was also instructed to bring back the relics of St. Andrew Bobola (1590-1657), a Polish Jesuit killed by the Cossacks. It was Gallagher, Walsh’s assistant, who actually took the relics out of Russia. Bobola was canonized in 1938. It should certainly make an interesting movie! I assume Harvey will be playing Walsh. Along with the upcoming Scorsese production of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence, about Portugese Jesuits in seventeenth century Japan, this should be one to watch for.