Major news this past week, especially among Catholic press, has been the conversion to Catholicism of scandal-ridden actor Shia LaBoeuf. Internet sources say LaBoeuf had already become a Christian in 2014 while filming a movie titled "Fury." Even so, LaBoeuf's actions since then—which he shamefacedly now calls disgusting—brought him ostracism. His career was in ruins.
The actor's conversion to the Catholic faith came during his preparation for playing Saint Pio of Pietrelcina in "Padre Pio"—a new movie premiering in Venice during the Venice Film Festival next week. The offer to play the role came at a time when he was an outcast. "Even my mother did not want to have anything to do with me." And he was close to suicide. "I had the gun on the table. . . . Pio saved my life."
LaBoeuf told Bishop Robert Barron in one interview among many during his press junket how he came to believe in the Catholic faith while hanging out with Capuchin Franciscan monks at their seminary in San Lorenzo as part of his research for the role, since Padre Pio was a Capuchin. At nearby Mission Sant Inez, LaBoeuf then received RCIA instruction from a Sacred Heart sister and was received into the Catholic Church. LaBoeuf also needed to learn the traditional Latin Mass—because that was the Mass of St. Pio. So he went on to study the TLM with a canon from the Institute of Christ the King in Oakland, California
I spoke to the canon who trained LaBoeuf, who didn't want his name mentioned. When he got the call asking him to train LaBoeuf, he thought it was a joke at first, but he agreed and trained the actor how to perform the parts of the TLM he was going to portray in the movie.
At daily TLMs offered at St. Margaret Mary Church, LaBoeuf found he was drawn from a kind of intellectual (what he calls "heady") kind of belief to a deeper emotional connection to the Mass and to Faith.
The following quotes are from Bishop Barron's interview with LaBoeuf, with some of the seemingly heartfelt but not always accurate terminology of a new convert.
TLM Affects Me, Like I've Been Let In on Something Very Special
"Latin Mass affects me deeply, because it feels like they're not selling me a car. At Santa Inez where I was catechized there is a lot of guitar playing and there is a lot of what feels like they are trying to sell me on an idea."There is something else that happens in Oakland at the Latin Mass every day of the week. It feels almost like I'm being being let in on something very special."
No Need to Know the Words
"It may feel exclusive sometimes, like I have to know Latin to experience it. But however I would also say that .. . I don't need to know the words. . . . I know what's going on. I feel it deeply. It almost feels more powerful than when I know every single word. It takes me out of the realm of the intellectual, and it puts me squarely in the realm of the feeling and the beauty thing you talk about.
"To deny some of the senses, heightens some of the others. So when you put me in this rationalist logical word, word, word, word, word . . . it takes me out of the feeling realm. Whereas Latin Mass puts me squarely in the feeling realm, because I can't argue the word, because I don't know what the word means—so I'm just left with this feeling that feels sacred and connected."
TLM Took Me Out of Belief Into Connection
"I had belief, but I never had a connection. The Latin Mass took me out of belief into connection."
At the end of the official trailer of "Padre Pio," Shia LaBoeuf portrays Padre Pio at the Consecration during a traditional Latin Mass.
