Why? Because in it a priest apostatizes? No, because this priest heard the voice of Jesus giving him permission to do so: in order to end his pain over the torture of Christians, which pain Christ said he understood, which pain he said was his divine mission was to understand. This film has caused a great deal of conversation, and not a little scandal, within Catholic circles. Until the moment when Rodriguez hears the voice of Christ coming from the fumi-e, the image of Christ he is being called upon to desecrate, a voice that gives Rodriguez permission to do just that-which he does-thereby setting himself and his fellow Christian captives free. Rodriguez calls out over and over to God for guidance, prays for mercy for the peasants and for himself-but God is silent. But for Rodriguez the road is long and the trials are many, and the most painful of all these is watching Christian peasants suffer and die at the hands of tormentors who promise Rodriguez that, if he will simply apostatize, the tortures and deaths will cease. Garrpe and Rodriguez end up separating, but they are determined to keep Christianity alive in Japan and to fulfill their mission. Their superior reluctantly gives them permission, and once in Japan the two friends are witness to the agony of the Christian people there-extreme poverty and hardship, no sacraments save baptism, and of course, the terror of the persecution, which eventually forces them to flee the Christian village to which they were ministering. It is a report that deeply troubles his former charges, and they are also afraid this report will scandalize all of Christian Europe. A report is circulating that Father Ferreira, himself responsible for tens of thousands of Japanese conversions to Christianity, has apostatized, has publicly renounced the Christian faith, under the pressure of the ruthless and brutal persecution that the Japanese government has begun conducting against its Christian population. It tells the story of two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, Sebastian Rodriguez (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver), who ask their superior to be allowed to go to Japan to seek the truth about their former mentor, Father Cristovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson). Silence, the Academy-Award-nominated film released in 2016 and directed by Martin Scorsese, is a long-awaited adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel of the same name.
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