David Paul Baird is a film critic and visiting professor at Catholic Pacific College.

His new book with two co-authors is Popcorn with the Pope, a guide to the Vatican

film list. That's our topic today. Welcome, Professor Baird. Thank you so much. Great to be here.

First, there really is a list. What's the history of this list? So the list was born in 1995 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of cinema.

So the pope at the time was John Paul II. He set up a commission of various priests there in the Vatican, one layperson.

And yeah, after a series of meetings, they put together a list to really just celebrate

cinema as an art form.

And there must have been people on that initial list who had some pretty good film knowledge

because the selections are pretty good.

I mean, a lot of serious

filmmaking, some, you know, popular entertainment, but there are a lot of film art,

renowned things that would be studied, you know, in film theory, film schools that are

on the list. So they were pretty good. Do you know of the people who were involved?

So not off the top of my head. I don't have the names of everyone,

but they were various people.

University professors, high-rating curates there in Vatican City.

So, yeah, as you say, this wasn't just a kind of cursory survey of the recent top of the

pops.

This was a kind of deep dive into the history of cinema and pulling out some really landmark

films, notable films, as you say, some lesser-known, more obscure art house

films. So it's really a pretty interesting collection. What was there a primary principle of

selection? I mean, do they have to be Catholic films? Do they have to, I mean, what were some of the

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