Saving Grace

A troubled man, hemmed in by the protocol of his position, Pope Leo XIV (Conti) impulsively opts for a working holiday. Moved by a little girl's story of her village - stricken by an earthquake and without a priest - the undercover Holy Father hitchhikes deep into the (picture postcard) Italian south, and proceeds to preach the protestant work ethic to people whose major source of income is government aid derived from the odd staged epidemic. Through his arduous efforts - 'he's a Pope who smiles, a Pope who cries, a Pope who loves, hates, and learns to love again' - Leo sets the villagers in motion once more. Despite a plot veiled in about as much mystery as an uncracked soft-boiled egg, Saving Grace does retain a certain Disneyesque charm as an innocent modern fable.