HBO Mini-Series "The Young Pope" Imagines First American Pope, Pius XIII

“I am a contradiction,” you hear the man’s voice say. “Like God: one and three and three in one. Like Mary: virgin and mother. Like man: good and evil.”

The voice belongs to actor Jude Law in a trailer for The Young Pope, an upcoming 8-part HBO mini-series that imagines the future pontificate of Pope Pius XIII, the first U.S.-born pope (see the trailer at the end of this article).

Law plays Pope Pius XIII, Diane Keaton plays Sister Mary, and the series is directed by Paolo Sorrentino, who won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014 for The Great Beauty.

From the series’ website:

…’The Young Pope’ tells the controversial story of the beginning of Pius XIII’s pontificate. Born Lenny Belardo, he is a complex and conflicted character, so conservative in his choices as to border on obscurantism, yet full of compassion towards the weak and poor. The first American pope, Pius XIII is a man of great power who is stubbornly resistant to the Vatican courtiers, unconcerned with the implications to his authority. […]

Sorrentino… says the series is about “the clear signs of God’s existence. The clear signs of God’s absence. How faith can be searched for and lost. The greatness of holiness, so great as to be unbearable when you are fighting temptations and when all you can do is to yield to them. The inner struggle between the huge responsibility of the Head of the Catholic Church and the miseries of the simple man that fate (or the Holy Spirit) chose as Pontiff. Finally, how to handle and manipulate power in a state whose dogma and moral imperative is the renunciation of power and selfless love towards one’s neighbor.”

The series is set to premiere in Europe in October and then on HBO on a date still to be determined.