(OSV News) — The University of Notre Dame has cleared and rehired a former residence rector of anonymous online sexual assault allegations, as her civil defamation case against her unknown accusers proceeds in an Indiana court.

The university provided OSV News with a statement from Karen Kennedy, associate vice president of residential life, who said a “thorough investigation” had determined “there was no evidence to support that any of the alleged misconduct occurred.”

Kennedy’s statement was shared in an email to residents of McGlinn Hall, one of the campus’ women’s residences, the university told OSV News.

Elizabeth Greenop — who had been removed as McGlinn’s rector and placed on leave in August pending a university investigation — will now serve as an assistant director of residential life, according to that office’s website and an Oct. 29 article by the school’s independent newspaper, The Observer.

Greenop had been the subject of several graphic sexual assault accusations posted in June and July to shareyourstory.notredame, an Instagram account not affiliated with the university.

Following professional news standards, OSV News did not disclose Greenop’s name in its initial coverage due to the uncorroborated nature of the anonymous, social media-based allegations. 

Greenop’s name and association with the matter became public record due to her August filing of a civil suit in St. Joseph County, Indiana, Superior Court.

The suit holds that the allegations made by the 10 defendants — referenced as “Jane” and “John Doe(s),” the legal convention for persons whose names are unknown or withheld for privacy — constitute both defamation and a false-light invasion of privacy, a charge similar to defamation.

In her affidavit, Greenop had denied all of the claims made in the allegations, noting she had “not been arrested for or charged with any crime in connection” with them.

Without naming Greenop, Kennedy said in her statement that “the rector in question was fully and thoroughly cooperative throughout the entire investigation, which included significant efforts to identify individuals with any knowledge relevant to the alleged misconduct as well as any misconduct involving the types that were alleged.”

Kennedy said the investigation “also included numerous interviews with members of the residence hall community,” adding that “at no point did anyone interviewed identify themselves as being subject to the alleged misconduct or as being aware of anyone else who had been subject to such misconduct.”

On Oct. 9, Greenop won a court order allowing her to subpoena social media giant Meta to identify those behind anonymous Instagram posts accusing her of sexual assault.

She can now demand that Meta, the parent company of Instagram, provide “documents and records sufficient to identify” the individuals behind both the allegations and the Instagram account that published the claims.

The administrator of the shareyourstory.notredame Instagram account declined comment to OSV News regarding the lawsuit and the results of the university investigation.

Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.

The post Notre Dame residence rector cleared of anonymous online abuse allegations first appeared on OSV News.

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Several fellow Catholic scholars, including some who have criticized Schnell’s apparent use of AI in writing, expressed surprise at the news, which underscores the thorny questions surrounding the rapidly growing adoption of AI tools in professional writing, particularly in higher education.

(CNS) — From horse-drawn ornate wooden carriages to a bulletproof all-electric vehicle, the papal modes of transport have evolved to keep the pope safe, seen and saving the planet.

The first time a car was offered to a pope was after the 1903 election of St. Pius X when the Archdiocese of New York donated one, said Sandro Barbagallo, curator of historical collections at the Vatican Museums.

“But the pope refused it,” he told reporters at a new exhibit featuring select popemobiles Oct. 28.

The pope politely declined the gift, he said, in part because a car was useless at the time since a dispute with the Italian government over the sovereignty of the Holy See kept popes confined to Vatican City from 1870 to 1929, and because he preferred walking in the Vatican Gardens and hearing “the sound of horses’ hooves along the path rather than the sound of an internal combustion engine.”

However, the pope’s limited opportunities to travel didn’t stop other eager Catholics from wanting to share this new invention; an association of Catholic women in Milan gave Pope Pius XI, who was elected in 1922, a car made by the Italian manufacturer Bianchi, which was expanding from making bicycles and motorcycles to automobiles.

When the 1929 Lateran Pacts finally allowed popes to go freely outside Vatican City walls, many car manufacturers started competing to give the pope a car, Barbagallo said, “so they could boast the title of supplier to the papal household.”

The first car that arrived immediately after the signing of the Lateran Pacts was a U.S. Graham-Paige 837, he said. Pope Pius XI ventured out in it — becoming the first pope to put the rubber to the road — to St. John Lateran to celebrate Mass to mark the 50th anniversary of his ordination.

Shortly thereafter, a Citroën and a Mercedes-Benz arrived, Barbagallo said, “but the Mercedes was already a cut above” all the others because it had been “specifically tailored for the pope.”

For example, he said, the Graham-Paige was just a standard model whose backseat had been replaced with a single seat. And even though it is an elegant, beautiful vehicle, “it looks more like a gangster’s car when you see it.”

Instead, the Mercedes-Benz Nürburg 460 limousine given to Pope Pius XI in 1930 has a large silk-brocade upholstered chair for the pope that faces other seats for his assistants in the back, and it has buttons for the pope to push that light up a dial in the driver’s section indicating “go faster,” “go slower,” turn right,” “turn left” and “go home.”

“Those were the electronics in 1930,” said Marcus Breitschwerdt, the CEO of Mercedes-Benz Heritage, during a news conference at the museums Oct. 28, unveiling the new, temporary exhibit of vehicles specifically designed and donated by the German company to the popes.

This fine-tuned attention to the unique needs and ministry of a papal passenger helped solidify an almost 100-year relationship between the Vatican and Mercedes-Benz, which was also celebrating the 140th anniversary of Karl Benz submitting a patent for his gas-powered vehicle in 1886, launching the invention of the automobile.

Another “invention” would eventually be made in the 20th century: the iconic popemobile, that is, a vehicle that could not only get a pope from place to place like with his special limos and sedans, but also let him be more visible and close to the people.

Back in the old days, the pope was hoisted up high in a grand “sedia gestatoria,” or portable papal throne, carried on the shoulders of 12 “sediari” or chair-carriers to move the pope through the crowds of the faithful during special ceremonies.

The first to create a vehicular version of that was Toyota, which modified an all-white 1975 Land Cruiser by removing the roof and rear body panel so the car was open and St. Paul VI could stand and offer his blessings.

However, there was nothing to sit on, Barbagallo said. So, for St. John Paul II, somebody retrofitted a white swivel seat taken from “a barber’s chair — I think it belonged to John XXIII — that they had to place on a metal base.”

Next came the all-white open-air 1980 Fiat Campagnola jeep, whose use became short-lived after a gunman in the crowd shot at and hit St. John Paul in 1981, after which all vehicles had to be made bulletproof.

The popemobile continued to evolve in other ways to adapt to the times and the pope’s agenda of greater sustainability, with the first fully electric, emissions-free popemobile created by Mercedes-Benz for Pope Francis before the 2025 Holy Year and used by Pope Leo XIV during his 2026 trip in France.

When greeting delegates from Mercedes-Benz at the Vatican Oct. 28, Pope Leo said, “Over the decades, the popemobile has evolved from a means of transportation into an instrument of encounter, enabling the pontiff to draw closer to the faithful during pastoral visits and public celebrations.”

“In this way, your work has helped facilitate the Church’s mission of reaching out to people and bringing a message of faith, hope and charity to the world,” he said, encouraging them “to continue placing technological innovation at the service of human dignity, care for creation and the common good.”

The post The popemobile race: How car companies rallied to serve a papal passenger first appeared on OSV News.

(OSV News) — Over 400 years ago, five Franciscan missionaries gave their lives for the teachings of the faith in what is now the state of Georgia.

As the Catholic Church prepared to beatify Friars Pedro de Corpa, Blas Rodríguez, Miguel de Añon, Antonio de Badajóz and Francisco de Veráscola on Oct. 31, pilgrims traveling to the Savannah Convention Center for the event talked about how these friars’ example touched their lives.

The friars were martyred in 1597 ministering to the Guale people of coastal Georgia after Father Pedro de Corpa stood by the Church’s teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman when the soon-to-be chief Juanillo wanted to take a second wife. Juanillo had Father Pedro killed and arranged the death of the other Franciscans serving in nearby missions.

The beatification is the first to take place in the state of Georgia and the Southeast United States and the sixth beatification to take place on U.S. soil.

Franciscan Father Roger Lopez, a provincial councilor of the Franciscan Friars Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe, volunteered to be a liaison to the Diocese of Savannah when the Franciscans received news that the beatification was moving forward.

“I volunteered not knowing what I was going to get myself into,” he said, but he went to Savannah and learned about the martyrs’ ministry to the Guale people, traveled to St. Catherines Island where one of their missions was discovered and was even able to celebrate Mass at the same place that the martyrs were killed.  

“All of this has really helped me to understand who my brothers are,” he told OSV News. “It’s been a wonderful journey of trying to understand their life, the historical pieces that were surrounding it, the events leading up to the martyrdom.”

Georgia martyrs faced challenge of presenting the Gospel

Unlike the California missions in the mid to late 1700s where missionaries served alongside a military presence that could create challenges, the Georgia martyrs served without one. “Their understanding of mission must have been very different in the sense of they had to incorporate very much with the people living with them, working with them,” he said.  

He thought the friars faced a “familiar challenge,” present in every age, a tension between the values of the Gospel and the values of the secular world that is part of the human condition.  

The Guale chief Juanillo, he said, faced that tension all those years ago when “he realizes he’s the heir apparent to the chiefdom and he realizes following the custom of the Guale people, taking on another wife, helps to bring prestige, helps to bring influence. And he completely knows, because he’s warned by the friars, by Father Pedro, that this is contrary to what Christ is inviting us into, and he disregards that.”  

Father Lopez thought Juanillo’s choice to kill the friars showed that there was “strong influence of the friars with the people because he knows that if he undermines the friars and the teachings in this way, he’s going to lose credibility, he’ll lose influence.”

“September 14th, 1597, he assembles the war party, he kills Pedro,” he said, “He moves over one by one as he starts to martyr. He realizes that the Church, the Gospel has become an infestation, so let’s remove it.”

Franciscans present witness in living, and dying, for Christ

He referenced “the paradox” of Matthew’s Gospel where Christ says that “whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

Franciscans celebrate the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi on Sept. 17 every year, marking when St. Francis received the wounds of Christ in the stigmata and that passage of St. Matthew’s Gospel is read.

“The friars would have heard, they would have read it,” he said as Sept 17th was the day Friars Miguel and Antonio were killed on St. Catherines Island. They finished the Mass, heard that Gospel and “only a short time after” they “put that very imitation of Jesus Christ into action.”

“Here are these friars who hear Scripture and they realize, ‘I have to be ready.’ And they are,” he said. “They could have ran, they could have defended themselves, but they were able to run out and meet the Lord when he did come.” 

Example of fervor for the Gospel

Father Lopez is “excited for the first time after their beatification” when he “will be able to use their name in the Mass during the Eucharistic prayer and to call upon them in that way through that Eucharist,” asking “these brothers to pray for me so that I will be ready at all times when Christ may come.” 

Father Lopez was traveling from Massachusetts to attend the beatification, and 20 to 30 of his fellow friars will also be in attendance. “There are friars who are coming from Spain from the original province that these martyrs are coming from,” he noted, adding that the 12th generation great-nephew of the martyr Francisco will be in attendance all the way from Spain.

He said he hopes Catholics are inspired by the beatification and see that “fervor for the Gospel is not something just for the past, it’s today.”

Alfonso Dagr, a parishioner at the Nativity of Our Lady Catholic Church in Darien, Georgia, learned about the Georgia martyrs soon after he moved three years ago and began attending Mass at the parish. His first Mass there opened with a prayer mentioning the martyrs and he learned their story.

“It really is amazing that they were willing to give their lives for the faith,” he said. “They were here sharing the faith and they didn’t give up on the faith no matter what happened to them.” 

Parish near where friars lost their lives a pilgrimage site

The parish is a recommended pilgrimage site for those attending the beatification as it is located in the area where the Georgia martyrs served the Guale and features a monument to the “Five Friars of Georgia” by artist Timothy Schmalz.

Dagr said it was “mind-blowing” to discover that the friars lost their lives right near where he lived and made him feel a “deeper connection” to them.

He called the beatification a “once in a lifetime event” for Georgia, for the diocese and for the local parish. He will be attending with his family and a friend he encouraged to join them for it and is excited to have “this public display of faith” with the event.

Artist’s depiction of Georgia martyrs part of art exhibition at beatification

Clorinda Galdos Bell, a Peruvian-born artist living in the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee, first heard of the Georgia martyrs when Father Charles Byrd commissioned her to do a painting of them for his parish at the time, Our Lady of the Mountains in Jasper, Georgia.

“It was a challenge for me because I didn’t have actually faces to work from,” she said, but Father Byrd gave her details about the friars and she read about their lives.  

Father Pedro de Corpa is depicted holding a cross, as his martyrdom took place first on Sept. 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Father Blas Rodríguez is tied with a rope as he was tied up before he was killed. Father Miguel de Añon holds a local palmetto, alluding to the palm as a symbol of martyrdom. Brother Antonio de Badajoz holds a rosary, as he and Father Miguel were able to celebrate Mass and pray the rosary as they awaited death. Finally, Father Francisco de Veráscola holds a hat and paddle as he was killed rowing back to the mission from St. Augustine, Florida, and didn’t have time to remove his hat. 

Bell said her painting style — the Peruvian Cuzco style — is “between icon and painting” where those depicted “have real faces” but you see through the details “the message God wants to teach people.”

She said that through the example of the Georgia martyrs “God is trying to teach us how important the family is” and “how important loyalty to each other is.”  

“I’m excited that those friars are being recognized for their strong faith,” she said of the upcoming beatification, “what inspired me most about these servants of God is how strong their faith was in giving their lives defending the sacrament of marriage.” 

She added that it was “exciting to see the roots of the Catholic Church in the South being recognized.”  

Bell was traveling to the event with her husband, Aaron, and her work will be a part of the art exhibition during the event at the Savannah Convention Center. Her artwork can be found at clorysgallery.com.

The Diocese of Savannah expected over 8,000 people to be in attendance for the beatification and expanded the event to a larger venue than originally planned. 

Lauretta Brown is culture editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @LaurettaBrown6.

The post Pilgrims to Georgia martyrs beatification inspired by their missionary spirit, witness first appeared on OSV News.

LONDON (OSV News) — The brother of a Pakistani government minister murdered because of his Catholic faith has called upon Western leaders to increase international pressure on Islamabad to protect religious minorities.

Peter Bhatti, an elder brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, spoke to OSV News during the launch in London of the 10th edition of “Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report into Christians oppressed for their Faith 2024-2026,” produced by the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need.

Speaking after an Oct. 27 reception in Portcullis House, part of the parliamentary estate, Bhatti said: “Neither the U.K. nor any other Western government is doing enough for the persecuted Christians of Pakistan.

“No country has done enough to protect religious minorities, especially the Christians,” he said. “The West needs to promote interfaith harmony in Pakistan so everyone can live together. Unless the West talks seriously with the Pakistani government that won’t happen.”

Bhatti wrote the foreword to the report because 2026 is the 15th anniversary of the assassination of his brother, Shahbaz, the federal minister for minorities affairs.

Shot in an ambush outside his mother’s home

Shahbaz was shot in an ambush outside his mother’s home because he sought the reform of the country’s notorious blasphemy laws and the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who had been falsely accused and sentenced to death.

Bibi was later given a reprieve and is now living in exile in Canada, and Shahbaz has been hailed as a martyr, with the Diocese of Rawalpindi-Islamabad opening his cause for canonization in 2016.

At the launch of the report, Bhatti said the perilous situation of religious minorities in Pakistan has not improved.

“Many human rights and religious freedom advocates have fallen silent out of fear that extremists might target them,” he said.

“As a result, religious minorities have continued to face persecution, including the misuse of blasphemy laws, abductions, forced conversion and forced marriages. The situation of religious minorities continues to go from bad to worse,” Bhatti warned.

“We urgently need to raise awareness of the reality of persecution of Christians and other religious minorities around the world today,” he said.

Calls for common strategy to combat oppression of faith minorities

He also called on the U.K. to work with the United States, the EU, Canada and other nations to develop a common strategy to combat the oppression of faith minorities.

Report editor John Newton told the meeting that “the lack of religious literacy in the West means anti-Christian animus is often downplayed or even omitted in favor of other factors.”

“I hope this report will inspire us to speak out for those who cannot, to stand with those who endure persecution,” he said.

The 42-page report examines the persecution of Christians in 18 countries over the past two years.

For Africa, it includes Egypt, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mozambique, Sudan and Eritrea; in the Middle East, it includes Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Pakistan and India are included for South Asia, and the Far East is represented by North Korea, China, Vietnam and Myanmar. Nicaragua is the only country from the Americas and no countries from Europe are included.

Persecution remained same in 8 countries, worsened in 10

Not a single country showed improvements for persecuted Christians, with the report revealing that in 10 countries persecution worsened while eight remained the same.

Pakistan was among the nations to show increased persecution. A case study reported that in “in April 2026, UN experts expressed ‘serious concern’ about the abduction, forced conversion and marriage of women and girls from Christian and other minority faith communities.”

It said: “In 2025 it was estimated that there might possibly be up to 2,000 kidnapping cases every year, with those abducted facing physical and sexual abuse.”

According to the report, Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most dangerous places to be a Christian because of “rampant” Islamic terrorist violence which, according to the report, has displaced 3.5 million people in Nigeria alone.

The report notes that in China, the Online Code of Conduct for Religious Personnel, introduced in 2025, made it illegal to disseminate religious content on the internet without the permission of the Communist authorities.

‘Only state-registered denominations allowed websites’

“It banned live-streaming liturgies, prayer meetings, and religious instruction for children and online preaching on unregistered websites,” it said in a China case study. “Only state-registered denominations are allowed websites. All online activity must demonstrate ‘support for the leadership of the Communist Party of China.'”

The report described how Church leaders in Syria fear an existential threat because of the fall in the Christian population by more than 80% since 2011, and says in Iran the arrests of Christians have doubled.

In an Oct. 27 press release, John Pontifex of Aid to the Church in Need said: “Persecution has become a huge, yet often hidden, factor driving entire communities from their homes, changing the religious demography of entire regions, especially in Africa. What will it take for the world to act?”

Simon Caldwell writes for OSV News from London.

The post Brother of slain Pakistani minister urges West to act as report finds Christian persecution worsens first appeared on OSV News.

CHICAGO (OSV News) — A new documentary series on Black Catholics on the sainthood track is set to kickoff Nov. 2 on the Archdiocese of Boston’s CatholicTV network.

During Black Catholic History Month, celebrated every November in the U.S., the half-hour documentaries about six African American Catholics with sainthood causes in the United States will highlight lives of extraordinary service — driven by love — according to the show’s host.

In the first episode of “Black Catholics: Footsteps to Sainthood,”  Father Augustus (Augustine) Tolton comes to life in a mixture of live acting and depictions aided by artificial intelligence. He was the first publicly recognized African American priest to serve in the United States.

Series producers held a media preview in Chicago, where Father Tolton served at Black Catholic parishes for more than a dozen years until his early death from heatstroke at age 43 in 1897.

The Father Augustus Tolton story

The son of enslaved Black Americans who were devout Catholics, Father Tolton, along with his brother and mother, escaped from Missouri across the Mississippi during the Civil War, finding freedom in Quincy, Illinois. There he received a Catholic education, but not without prejudice and difficulties. Priests and religious sisters mentored him and encouraged the young man’s vocation. Due to racism in the U.S. Church blocking his path to priesthood there, Father Tolton could only attend the seminary at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome, which welcomed the vocations of people of color.

Retired Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry of Chicago, postulator for Father Tolton’s sainthood cause, opened the night with a prayer that he wrote for the priest’s cause.

Before the special screening, he told OSV News that Father Tolton’s “story naturally stirs sympathy in people.”

“I think we naturally gravitate to people who have come through great odds, suffered and struggled a lot, and somehow have survived,” said Bishop Perry. “And people hang on those stories, because they remind people of their own struggles, and help people give an assessment of their stories in ways in which … may have never occurred to them before.” 

Nearly a dozen African American voices featured

Bishop Perry’s voice is one of nearly a dozen African American voices interviewed in the whirlwind 30 minutes that packs in a significant combination of details about the priest’s life of service and his inspiration to Black clergy including bishops, priests and deacons.

The series is hosted by Ansel Augustine, assistant director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops‘ Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church and staff contact for the Subcommittee on African American Affairs. Augustine introduces each Black Catholic on the road to sainthood being featured and weaves in narration throughout each episode.

These “stories need to be told,” Augustine said.

“These are not just Black Catholic stories,” he told OSV News. “These are Catholic stories, especially in America, and beyond, because it talks about the importance, the contributions, the resilience, the faithfulness of these Black Catholic, holy men and women. … It’s important (for) when they become saints, because of the representation within the Church, the universal Church, and the inspiration they give, continually, to Catholics of all backgrounds.”

Inspiring examples of Black Catholics

Augustine pointed to the inspiring examples among the four venerables and two servants of God being featured in the series. Father Tolton, Mother Henriette Delille, Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange and Pierre Toussaint have been declared venerable, a recognition of their heroic virtues. Sister Thea Bowman and Julia Greeley are servants of God. Their sainthood causes originated in the U.S., he explained.

A seventh Black Catholic up for sainthood is Friar Martin de Porres Maria Ward, a Boston native and the first Black Conventual Franciscan in North America. His cause originated out of Brazil, where he served as a missionary for almost half of the 20th century.

As a group, they have been dubbed the “Saintly Seven.”

Augustine said, “Mother Henriette Delille, who is my own personal connection because she ministered in my neighborhood back home in New Orleans and and the nuns that she started, Sisters of the Holy Family, had a hand in raising me and helped me get into ministry when I was searching for what I wanted to do. … Her story of educating Black children when it was illegal is powerful.”

He noted some others, such as Pierre Toussaint and Julia Greeley, were actually enslaved, but they “did not allow society to define their worth and dignity — they believed in what God was telling them through their prayers, through their Catholic faith, to use their gifts to make society a better place.”

Black Catholics on road to sainthood used gifts ‘to make society a better place’

Mother Delille, born into a free family, whose great-great grandmother won freedom from slavery, founded her own order in 1842, when no congregation would accept a black woman. 

Toussaint, who died in 1853, is the only lay Catholic interred at New York’s Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where he was originally denied entry because of his race. In New York, he and his wife served the orphaned, poor and marginalized regardless of their race with his own earnings as a skilled hairdresser. 

Greeley, a devotee of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was blind in one eye from a slave-whipping. In 1880, she entered the Catholic Church as an adult living in Denver where she served poor Black, white and immigrant families on the streets.

Mother Mary Lange founded the first Catholic religious order for women of African descent in the United States in 1829. Mother Lange’s Oblate Sisters of Providence taught children of color, who at the time were denied an education.

Sister Thea Bowman, born in 1937 to highly-educated, Black Methodist parents, fell in love with the Catholic faith in high school and joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, facing discrimination within and outside the order. She is widely known as an exemplary promoter of charity and inclusivity in her interreligious work and in highlighting contributions of Black Catholicism to the wider Church.

‘They were motivated by love’

“Like any of our saints, these were imperfect people in an imperfect world, trying to promote a perfect love,” Augustine said. “They were motivated by love to do what they did in each of their lives.”

“And I think that’s the inspiration that people will walk away with,” he said of the series. “That they didn’t allow the realities of slavery, the realities of segregation, the reality of racism, the reality of poverty, whatever it may be, to not let God use them.”

Simone Orendain is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Chicago.

The post New CatholicTV series focuses on service, driven by love, by Black Catholics on sainthood track first appeared on OSV News.

Catholic priests amid first responders to a high-speed train collision in Spain. U.S. bishops will meet in Baltimore next month.

The head of the Scottish bishops’ conference will step back, citing medical advice. The Archdiocese of Vienna is on track to celebrate its second highest annual number of adult baptisms this year.

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NEW YORK (OSV News) — The adult-oriented but never crass romantic fantasy “Wicker” (Black Bear) makes an old-fashioned case that there’s a man for every woman. Provided, in this case, that she’s not too particular about him being woven from willow rods.

Husband-and-wife co-writers and directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson have adapted Ursula Wills’ short story “The Wicker Husband,” published in 2008, into a near-perfect fable about loneliness, self-esteem, and the fulfillment men and women can find in each other.

In an imaginary long-ago, far-away village, everyone is identified solely by the work they do. The Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman), a spinster, sells her catch every day and is mostly known in the community for retaining the smell of her fish.

Weddings there have peculiar rituals. Brides are adorned with collars to underline their status as chattel, and after each wedding, a ritual involving eggs woven by the mysterious Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage) determines the next woman to be wed.

When it’s the Fisherwoman’s turn, she decides she doesn’t want to go through the humiliation of being rejected. So she asks the Basket Weaver to build her a husband. It’s her idea of a joke on her tormentors.

The Basket Weaver not only succeeds in his commission. He somehow manages to instill life and empathy into his handsome creation (Alexander Skarsgard).

In fact, Wicker Man is perfect in all other respects as well. He’s moral, kind to everyone, and attentive to the Fisherwoman’s emotional needs. With her life and household in order, she glows with contentment.

The villagers, after their jokes about the Wicker Man’s romantic prowess become stale, react with jealousy. The men know they can’t measure up to this ideal, and the women resent the Fisherwoman’s new happiness. The lack of satisfaction in their own marriages, moreover, becomes uncomfortably obvious.

When the Bottle Washer’s widow (Marli Siu), despondent at the loss of her husband, asks the Basket Weaver to make her a wicker baby, he obliges. But this launches gossip that Wicker Man has been unfaithful, slander that’s egged on by the Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki).

Eventually the men of the village decide that a wicker woman would make their lives ideal. But this does not go the way they hope.

The movie takes on the joys and disappointments of married life straightforwardly. It also goes in unexpected directions that keep its story compelling.

The film contains a couple of scenes of semi-graphic marital lovemaking, implied sexual activity, rear male and partial nudity, bawdy humor including crude sexual banter, fleeting gore and brief rough language. The OSV News classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Kurt Jensen is a guest reviewer for OSV News.

The post Wicker first appeared on OSV News.