Fox Nation announced June 11 that an eight-episode second season of the docudrama series “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” will become available for streaming beginning in November and continuing through the spring of next year. As before, celebrated director Scorsese will host, narrate and executive produce the programs.
Each installment will explore the life of a single saint. The holy men and women to be profiled range from Biblical figures like the Virgin Mary and Sts. Peter and Paul to later luminaries, including Ireland’s co-patron, St. Patrick. The contemporary era is represented by Blessed Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006, aged 15, and whose canonization is scheduled for Sept. 7.
As was the case with the show’s first season, the new episodes will be divided in half, with four premiering in the fall and another quartet being released around Easter time. The program’s renewal was perhaps predictable given the fact that it has proved to be the streaming service’s most popular offering ever.
In a press release, series creator and co-director Matti Leshem described “The Saints” as a celebration of “the very best of humanity — courage, sacrifice and, above all, faith.”
Raised in a Catholic milieu, Scorsese has often focused on religious topics. Prominent examples of his treatment of such themes include his highly controversial 1988 adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ 1955 novel “The Last Temptation of Christ” as well as his less-divisive 2016 screen version of Shusaku Endo’s 1966 work of historical fiction “Silence.”
By his own account, the basic idea for “The Saints” first came to Scorsese as far back as the early 1980s. He originally envisioned making a series of films about people of remarkable sanctity before eventually shifting to a small-screen format.
Though the realization of his plan may have taken decades, the project was never entirely shelved. In a 2017 interview with Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, former editor in chief of the journal La Civiltá Cattolica, Scorsese noted, “I never lost my interest in characters who tried to live their lives in imitation of Christ, and I knew that I would return to that one day.”
John Mulderig is media reviewer for OSV News.
