Vatican gives Harry Potter film approval

The Vatican has given its approval to the latest Harry Potter film, six years after Cardinal Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI – criticised the books about the teenage wizard for “distorting Christianity” in young people.

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, the sixth big-screen instalment of the Potter adventures and featuring Gloucester Cathedral, was praised by the Holy See’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano for showing that good should triumph over evil and that the battle between the two sometimes required sacrifices.

The paper also said the film’s depiction of adolescent love had the “correct balance”, but criticised the movie for making no clear reference to the transcendent.

The movie, which goes on general release in the UK today, sees Harry and Professor Dumbledore do battle with the wicked Lord Voldemort once again, while teenage hormones run riot through Hogwarts.

JK Rowling’s creation has come in for criticism from Christian groups in the past, and Rupert Grint, who plays Harry’s chum Ron Weasley, spoke earlier this month of the “terrifying” moment he saw his picture being burned by religious enthusiasts in the US who thought the Potter adventures endorsed witchcraft.

In 2003, the Pope – then a cardinal – wrote to the German author of a book called Harry Potter – Good Or Evil? to express his disapproval of Rowling’s creation.

He wrote: “It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.”