Manuel Cauchi is opening up about his new role in a docudrama exploring the lives of the saints by award-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese.
“This role required a leap of faith, yes; perhaps a great one, in hindsight,” the 70-year-old Maltese actor, who appears in an upcoming episode about St. Moses the Black in “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” told Our Sunday Visitor in emailed comments. “Faith that I would be able to forget my own being and immerse myself into another being to be able to find and express those salient points that hopefully make the character remarkable.”
In the episode, which premieres on Fox Nation April 11, Cauchi plays Isidore, the abbot of a remote desert monastery in 4th-century Egypt who offers refuge to Moses, an Ethiopian man with a troubled past. Isidore and his community of ascetic monks inspire Moses to renounce his former life as the leader of a violent band of outlaws and as someone engaged in prostitution. Moses joins the monks and dedicates his life to God.
Along the way, Isidore never gives up on Moses as he struggles with the sins of his past. Isidore’s guidance is pivotal in the conversion and transformation of Moses, who is now recognized as a desert father and holy monk.
“I saw Isidore as that simple quiet man who can move mountains with his intense belief and not bat an eyelid in front (of) any opposition,” Cauchi said of his character. “He is the man who can give you answers before you ask the question. Risk death before losing hope.”
More than popular perception
The hour-long episode comes as part of Scorsese’s saints docudrama released by Fox Nation, Fox News Media’s subscription streaming service. Scorsese, a Catholic, serves as the executive producer, host and narrator for the docuseries that reaches across time and space to follow heroic men and women who dedicated their lives to God no matter the cost. Matti Leshem, who is Jewish, serves as the series’ creator.
The series resumed airing weekly on April 4 with an episode about St. Francis of Assisi and concludes on April 18 with St. Mary Magdalene. These new episodes follow episodes that aired last year, which featured St. Joan of Arc, St. John the Baptist, St. Sebastian and St. Maximilian Kolbe.
Cauchi revealed what drew him to the role of Isidore in the episode about “Moses the Black.”
“Playing real life characters has its ups and downs,” he began. “Popular perception is your first obstacle. You can flow with that as an actor and walk away empty or else risk it all and make that character your own.”
He believed in the second option, he said.
“Having the opportunity to play a real-life character doesn’t come along everyday for an actor,” he said, “and I did my utmost to make Isidore my own.”
‘Be transformed’
Cauchi spoke about his country, Malta, where an overwhelming majority of citizens are Catholic.
“Being raised in one of the most Catholic islands in the Mediterranean, it’s hard not to be brought up as Catholic,” he said. “The Maltese archipelago boasts of having more than 360 churches in its tiny 27 (square kilometer) size. You can attend a different church almost every single day of the year!”
Today, he said, he considers himself a spiritual person.
“Over time in life I have definitely become more of a spiritual being than a ‘religious’ man,” he said, adding that he finds “many organized religions offer different structure and comfort to different people.”
Throughout the new episode, his character refers to several Bible verses. Cauchi shared his own personal favorite, Romans 12:2.
“Do not conform to the pattern of the world,” he cited the verse, “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
