Viewing of Martin Scorsese’s Silence

This event was co-produced by the Critical Understanding of Liturgies & Traditions (CULT), a student RSO, and the Lumen Christi Institute.

This event is sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Nicklin Fellows Program, which supports and encourages University of Chicago undergraduate students to develop their intellectual maturity. Francesco Rahe, who designed this program, is a 2023-2024 Nicklin Fellow. 

Set in Japan in 1670, where Catholicism had been outlawed and the faithful lived in hiding, the story followed two Portuguese priests—students of the renowned Father Ferreira, who had publicly renounced his faith—as they secretly journeyed to sustain the Japanese Catholic community, seek sanctity, and discover why their teacher had apostatized.

Published in 1966, Shusaku Endo’s Silence quickly came to be regarded as one of the great Catholic novels of the 20th century, received the Tanizaki Prize, drew comparisons to Graham Greene, and examined questions of colonization, self-sacrifice, and the problem of evil.

Members of the University of Chicago community engaged this history through Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film adaptation of Silence. Dr. Bruce Winkelman—a Divinity School teaching fellow and historian of religions—delivered the introductory talk; his research spans theory and method in the study of religion, the history and historiography of Japanese religions, and the invention of Buddhist traditions across East Asia.