Rome, Italy, May 12, 2006 / 12:00 am (CNA).- Three top Vatican officials have expressed dismay at what they see as a clear religious ignorance evident in book “The Da Vinci Code,” which will make its film debut on May 18th.

During a conference on religion and literature in Rome, the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Paul Poupard, said the Dan Brown book seriously distorts the history of the Church and takes advantage of the ignorance of many Catholics about their faith in order to confuse reality with fiction.  

“The lack of basic knowledge makes it difficult to distinguish between fables, fantasies and attacks on the history and values of the Church,” he noted.

Commenting on one scene that focused on the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Julian Herranz, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, said it seemed “like something from a movie about the mafia, a kind of gangster meeting in Chicago.”  

He said the Church had "to urge people to do some reading (so they can) confront lies with the truth of the Christian faith."

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said he had no doubt that both the novel and the film show a great ignorance about the true history of Christ and of the Church.

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