Gregory Peck, My Favorite Movie Priest

Today marks the passing of another actor with Catholic connections, Gregory Peck (1916-2003), who’s buried in L.A.’s cathedral. Two of his movies have had a profound impact on many Catholics: The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) and The Scarlet and the Black (1983). The first, based on A.J. Cronin’s novel, has Peck playing Francis Chisholm, a priest who works in China for several decades. It was Peck’s second movie, and it gave him his first Oscar nod. Nearly forty years later, Peck donned a cassock again to play another priest (a real one this time), Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish priest who worked in the Vatican during the Second World War.

Known as the “Pimpernel of the Vatican,” O’Flaherty helped smuggle some 6,500 civilians and prisoners of war out of Nazi hands. Made for television, The Scarlet and the Black’s stellar cast includes John Gielgud as Pope Pius XII and Christopher Plummer as Colonel Herbert Kappler, the Nazi officer in charge of wartime Rome. It’s a great tale of moral courage in the face of systematic evil. It’s also a tale of forgiveness that never becomes trite or sentimental.

I recommend both movies, but I’m partial to Keys. It’s that rare 1940’s movie that’s still relevant. Father Chisholm is a man of real holiness; one critic described him as “a walking saint.” Most movie priests of the era were genial Irish-Americans like Bing Crosby or Spencer Tracy, but Peck’s Chisholm is different. As a young man he falls in love before he goes into the seminary, his best friend is an atheist, and he even questions Church teaching (yes, in the 1940’s!).

As a young priest, his first parish is no bed of roses, and his first days in China are a disaster. But he hangs in there, and by the time he leaves China he’s a local institution. Another thing that makes Keys unique is its treatment of a priest’s loneliness, something not even implied in most movies of the era. And this priest actually deals with some difficult people, some of whom wear mitres, some cassocks, and other habits. And sometimes he even loses his temper. This is no plaster saint! At least one priest I know attributes his vocation to this film, and many others have cited its influence.

To sum it up, then, Gregory Peck is my favorite “movie priest.” And today, on the occasion of his passing, I recommend these two movies for your viewing pleasure!