(Doug Mainwaring/LifeSiteNews) — Director Mel Gibson’s choice of a radical pro-abortion extremist to play the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in The Resurrection of the Christ has ignited a firestorm of protest in the actress’s native Poland, perhaps the most pro-life nation on Earth.
The long-awaited sequel to The Passion of the Christ, now in production at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios, has been completely recast, with Polish actress Katarzyna Smutniak playing Jesus’ mother, Mary.
The choice of Smutniak “seems like sheer blasphemy,” Olivier Bault, Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture and the Center for Life and Family director of communications, told LifeSiteNews.
Smutniak “has given her unequivocal support to the so-called ‘Women’s Strike,’ whose demands include the legalization of abortion on demand and which often took on a vulgar and aggressive tone toward the Catholic faith — seen by pro-abortion activists as responsible for the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s 2020 ruling banning eugenic abortion, i.e., abortion motivated by a diagnosis of congenital anomaly (such as Down syndrome) or an incurable disease of the unborn child,” Bault said.
Below is a video of Krystian Kratiuk, from the Polish-language “Polonia Christiana” (dubbed in English), discussing the controversy surrounding Katarzyna Smutniak’s choice for the role of the Virgin Mary in the second part of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” (Sorry for the awkward, AI-sounding English translation!)
