By Joshua McElwee
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -A U.S. actor known for playing Jesus on a popular television show visited the Vatican on Monday.
Jonathan Roumie, star of the streaming series “The Chosen” about the life of Jesus Christ, spoke at an event ahead of a special Vatican screening of an episode from the fifth season of the show, which will release internationally in July.
Roumie was joined by fellow cast members Elizabeth Tabish, George Xanthis, and Vanessa Benavente, who respectively play Mary Magdalene, St. John the Apostle, and Mary, the Mother of God.
“Coming to the Vatican is always an honour,” Roumie, a practicing Christian, told Reuters. “The possibility of getting to meet the newest pontiff is extraordinary.”
“The Chosen” is a historical drama that follows the life of Jesus Christ – from gathering disciples to his ultimate persecution at the hands of the Roman empire.
Season 5 includes Jesus’s last supper with his disciples and many of the renowned biblical events just before his death.
The cast came to the Vatican a day after wrapping up three weeks of shooting for the sixth season of the show which will portray the crucifixion, an episode filmed in the southern Italian town of Matera.
One of the world’s oldest continuous human settlements, with stone houses cut from surrounding cliffs, some of which have been occupied for millennia, Matera stood in for Jerusalem.
U.S. filmmaker Mel Gibson also used the Italian town for his 2004 movie about the crucifixion, The Passion of the Christ.
Roumie and the other cast members are set to meet Leo, the first U.S. pontiff, during the pope’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee, Editing by William Maclean)
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