Several years ago, Catholic actor Leonardo Defilippis com mitted himself to his lar gest project yet, Thérèse: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love — a feature-length motion picture on the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

With the film finished and being shown in exclusive screenings around the nation, Defilippis told Register correspondent Philip Moore about the motivation behind, and the challenges involved in, making the film and finding its audience.

Thérèse is a major step forward for you, isn't it?

We're moving into different media, and this is good because we're trying to slowly build up. What we're doing is going to be much bigger. Our goal is rooted in Pope John Paul II's philosophy and his challenge to us as artists to embrace the new evangelization [so] that Christ is heard in the world. That is our mission and our vision, to create a Catholic presence and a Catholic identity. As the Holy Father reminds us, the word [evangelization] means to make Christ known, to do what the saints did and reach out to everyone, to the whole world.

What has it been like to transition from acting to essentially running a business?

St. Luke Productions is a nonprofit corporation, but we're creating, basically, a theatrical company that runs as a business, and that's one of the difficult challenges. God has chosen an artist to help do that, which is not always the best idea. I could have acted all the time, alone, and would have been happy doing that. But I realized that I had to do this in order to create an organization that can make these things possible — to give other artists, especially Catholic artists, opportunities where they would not have any other opportunities.

What made you choose St. Thérèse for your biggest project so far?

I chose to go to the heart of the Church, meaning that we let Christ be the center. From there, we take some of the greatest saints that have ever lived, because great saints are basically great heroes of our past ages. The inspiration for Thérèse was the Carmelite nuns who asked us to do a stage play about her life. We even traveled with the reliquary for a while during her centenary, performing the play. That was the inspiration, the driving force.

St. Thérèse didn't do anything heroic like Joan of Arc or Francis of Assisi or Maximilian Kolbe, but she's the most popular saint in the world because she is the person who takes us wherever we're at and makes sanctity available. Another thing about her is that she was a neurotic person who could have been really confused and God changed that. She was also a middle-class person. We have a lot of confused, neurotic, middle-class people — ourselves probably included — and we can make that switch where we become like her.

Thérèse is a big change from your earlier films and stage productions. Is it a big leap or the natural next step?

Right, we've made small steps, and that's only normal because Rome wasn't built in a day and still isn't. You're right in that Maximilian was a way of honoring him, but it's still one person — a tele-film. For St. John of the Cross, we added 65 people and did more, but it didn't qualify as a feature film. Then, when we did Thérèse, we really jumped into a full-length feature film.

This was a huge undertaking. We had to get involved in every aspect of filmmaking.

For me, I made a quantum leap. I was a director of the movie, which is a huge, huge responsibility and a lot more complicated than acting. What's interesting is that this will be the first nonprofit movie ever done for the big screen — the first movie done with donations.

We call this the “making of a miracle” because it has been a series of one miracle after another. It's the classic story of being in the middle of the shoot and there's no money left, then someone sends money right at that time.

This has really been a movie of the “Church of the people,” because everyone has given to this. Not only are monasteries giving to this, there are individuals, Church leaders, business people and Hollywood itself has donated a lot to this film.

St. Thérèse is the most popular saint in the world because she takes us wherever we're at and makes sanctity available.

— Leonardo Defilippis

This is why we are trying to persevere. Because of the negativity toward media, this is an incredible opportunity to show our Catholic faith in a glorious and positive way — not just here in our country but for the whole world.

I was surprised that you didn't follow the established pattern of going direct to video.

We were thinking about it, but the Holy Father [calls artists to strive for] the highest professional standards. So, we thought that it means in the movie industry to go to the big screen.

Another reason is because Thérèse is a really powerful movie in the big screen. That's true for any film because a movie is an artform that's meant to be experienced in the dark, in ways that you can't in your home.

When can we expect to see this in theaters?

We've had some exclusive screenings, but they were all to garner endorsement and financial backing. We're really hoping this will be ready for next October, for her feast day. One exciting thing that happened is that Cardinal Francis George saw it in Chicago and now is going to help bring it to the Holy Father. This will be coming full circle, since the idea for this all started with our Holy Father.

Philip S. Moore writes from

Portland, Oregon.