Church Groups Ramp Up Anti-'Da Vinci' Campaigns

May 17, 2006 — -- As fans eagerly await the opening of "The Da Vinci Code" in the United States on Friday, Christian protests against the film have reached a fever pitch and include criticisms from Vatican officials, who are fuming.

Monsignor Angelo Amato, the second in command in the Vatican's influential doctrinal department, said the fictional work contains slander, offenses and errors, and if "they were directed toward the Koran or the Holocaust [they] would have justifiably provoked a worldwide revolt," he said. "Yet because they were directed toward the Catholic Church, they remain unpunished."

Cardinal Francis Arinze, believed to be a leading contender for pope last year, has called for "legal actions."

"Is 'The Da Vinci Code' anti-Catholic?" San Francisco's Archbishop George H. Niederauer asked in the archdiocesan newspaper Catholic San Francisco. "Well, sure it is. The book is at least as anti-Catholic as it is anti-Christian."

When the movie opens this weekend, Catholic bishops in the United States will release a documentary refuting "The Da Vinci Code" for its claims of secret imagery in the painting of "The Last Supper," claims they say have no artistic or scriptural basis.

Their effort is part of this global campaign against the movie, which stars Tom Hanks.

In London, church representatives have gone to movie theaters to distribute 300,000 "fact versus fiction" scratch cards about details in the movie. For example, one item reads: "Among the fictional points noted, the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is a matter of historical record." That would be fiction, the card says.

In Thailand this week, church leaders tried to get the movie's last 10 minutes clipped.

On Sunday, the Greek Orthodox Church's supreme body will issue a leaflet calling the film "ridiculous," "false" and "treacherous."

At the Cannes Film Festival today, the creative forces behind the film tried to quell the controversy.

"This is not a documentary. This is not something that is pulled up and says, 'These are the facts and this is what happened,'" said Hanks.