Pope’s Movie Taste and Why Opinions Aren’t Facts

I’ve Been Thinking… About the Pope’s Movie Taste and Why Opinions Aren’t Facts

Every now and then someone in power says something so harmlessly wild that it reminds me how funny humans are. And this week, that person was Pope Leo XIV, who sat down with Vanity Fair and revealed his four favorite movies: It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music, Ordinary People, and Life Is Beautiful.

All classics. All beloved. All respectable picks.

And yet… sir.

With all due respect to the Holy See, these are the cinematic equivalent of someone telling you their favorite meal is “a nice chicken breast with no seasoning.” There’s nothing wrong with it. Totally valid. But also: this is a man who has access to the Vatican archives, decades of world cinema, thousands of films exploring philosophy, storytelling, ethics, and human meaning — and he came back with “Here are four movies they show in high school English class when the teacher forgets their laptop at home.”

Now, I’m not mad at it. I’m not calling the Pope a bad person because he likes Julie Andrews twirling on a hill. I like some questionable movies, too. If you ever catch me defending an Adam Sandler comedy from 2003, no you didn’t.

But here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about:
me teasing Pope Leo’s movie taste is a disagreement about preference — not a disagreement about truth.

We’re allowed to disagree about taste. That’s the whole point of having personalities. Your favorite food can be steak; mine can be sushi; someone else might like pickles dipped in ranch for reasons science cannot explain. None of this affects anyone’s credibility. Nobody is wrong. Nobody is lying. Nobody needs to write a dissertation defending their choice.

Taste is biased. Taste is personal. Taste is free.

Now here’s where things get messy in the world — you can’t apply that same “this is just my preference” logic to everything.
Some things are not opinions. Some things are facts.

If I say the Sun is at the center of the solar system — which it is — and you say, “Well actually, I think Pluto is the center,” we are no longer having a cozy, subjective conversation. One of us is wrong. And not in the fun, “Ha-ha, you don’t like sushi” kind of way. In the “please stop reinventing astronomy on Facebook at 2 a.m.” kind of way.

Whenever someone tries to blur that line — the line between I like this and this is true — the whole conversation breaks. Credibility evaporates. Logic leaves the chat. Suddenly we’re arguing about whether gravity is a “matter of perspective,” and I’m packing my emotional bags.

The Pope’s movie list?
Harmless. Purely opinion. Subjective. Something you can lovingly roast without any moral stakes.

But saying Pluto is the center of the galaxy?
That’s not an opinion.
That’s a plot twist from a bad sci-fi movie playing in the background of a dentist’s waiting room.

And that, I think, is the bigger lesson:
Disagreement about preference is healthy. Disagreement about reality is chaos.

I can disagree with the Pope about cinema and still think he’s doing his best. But if he ever tries to tell me Life Is Beautiful is the greatest film ever made and Pluto runs the Milky Way?
I’m calling NASA, the Vatican, and maybe a therapist just to be safe.

I’ve been thinking…
we’d all get along better if we stopped treating facts like flavors of ice cream and opinions like immutable truths.
Let people enjoy their bland movies.
Let gravity be gravity.
And let’s all stop pretending the universe is up for debate just because we logged onto the internet today.