Star of the Da Vinci Code film Tom Hanks was met with a crowd of angry protestors Monday as he arrived on set at Lincoln Cathedral for the first day of filming.
A Catholic nun, Sister Mary Michael, 61, led the protestors outside in a 12-hour prayer vigil. She told reporters, “I just don’t think it is right that they are filming this story here. I know the Bishop and Dean argue that it is fiction – and it might even be brilliant fiction – but it is against the very essence of what we believe.”
Tom Hanks, who plays the novel’s protagonist Professor Robert Langdon, had to be chauffeur-driven the short distance from his five star hotel to the Abbey, where he waved briefly at a small gathering of fans.
Lincoln Cathedral agreed to let the film be shot on its premises after Westminster Abbey, where parts of the novel are originally set, refused absolutely on the grounds that the Dan Brown thriller were “theologically unsound”.
The Cathedral gave the go-ahead for filming two weeks after the film’s producers made a £100,000 donation. Cathedral Dean, the Very Rev Alec Knight, snubbed Brown’s multi-million selling book as a “load of old tosh”.
The movie website imdb.com alleges, however, that he agreed to filming because of the priceless publicity it would bring to the Cathedral.
The Dean said of the book: “It is fiction. It has been attacked as blasphemous because it argues that Jesus’ humanity included an element of sexuality.
“My view is that the book is not blasphemous. It does not denigrate God in any way,” he added.
Sister Mary, of Our Lady’s Community of Peace and Mercy in Lincoln, said, however, that the allegation of Jesus being married and having a child with Mary Magdalene was based on agnostic heresy.
The film version of the Da Vinci Code, directed by Ron Howard and also starring Sir Ian McKellen, is expected to be next summer’s blockbuster. Parts of the film will also be shot at the Roslin Chapel in Midlothian next month.
