Pope Francis, who died at the age of 88 on Easter Monday, had a special relationship with cinema going back to his childhood in Buenos Aires.

“I owe my cinema culture above all to my parents who took us to the cinema a lot,” the pontiff said in a 2013 interview, a few months after his election as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the Argentinian capital in 1936 to parents with roots in northern Italy, Italian cinema figured highly in his early cinema-going.

In the same 2013 interview, Pope Francis named Federico Fellini’s 1954 Oscar-winning work La Strada, starring Giulietta Masina as fragile protagonist Gelsomina who is abused by brutish circus strongman Zampanò, played by Anthony Quinn, as the film he loved the most.

“I identify with that film, in which there is an implicit reference to Saint Francis,” said the pontiff referring to its themes of love...