Fr. Emilio Mayer, the “cinema priest” of Bergamo, Italy, died on 2 January 2018 at the age of 99. He had served as director of SAS (Servizio Assistenza Sale) of the Lombard capital from 1965-2008, and as president of the Catholic Association of Cinema Operators from 1981-1999.
At the outset of his priestly ministry, Fr. Mayer discovered cinema as a space for meeting and dialogue. “If in church only the priest speaks,” he used to say, “in our oratory halls the people also speak. There is dialogue there and it is a precious opportunity to pre-evangelize. Very often I have seen people who have never set foot in church take an active participation in cineforums.” Precisely for this reason he zealously promoted that particular communications medium in his pastoral service, holding several meetings each week in parishes throughout the Lombard zone to discuss quality cinema. Speaking of his personal story, he said: “As a priest, I started from a cinema considered recreation and fun, and then discovered its cultural and pastoral component.”
Fr. Ivan Maffeis, director of the Office for Social Communications as well as Undersecretary of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, says: “The Italian Catholic Church cannot help but mourn the loss of this pastor, recalling how he used the art of cinematography to accompany his flock and touch the souls of people.”
The Daughters of St. Paul too want to say a heartfelt thank you to Fr Emilio, a “frontier priest” who was able to grasp with great intuition (and a bit of insanity at that time) the great cultural and pastoral role of cinema in the Church.