The pope's personal preacher railed on Friday against Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and the recently published Gospel of Judas, saying they amounted to a fresh betrayal of Christ.
In a Good Friday homily in St Peter's Basilica, Capuchin father Raniero Cantalamessa told Benedict XVI and several top Vatican officials that the media was exploiting the Christian tradition to make millions of dollars.
"No one can stop this wave of speculation, which is in fact going to get stronger with the imminent release of a certain film," he said, in a clear allusion to the movie of the Da Vinci Code, which is due out next month.
Cantalamessa said there was a growing trend in the media to weave fanciful stories which played shamelessly with Christian beliefs and ancient legends. As well as making money for the publishers, these stories misled millions of people, he continued.
The Da Vinci Code portrays the Catholic Church as a corrupt organisation determined to hide certain explosive truths and contains the notion that Jesus Christ married and had descendants.
The Capuchin then directed his attention at the so-called Gospel of Judas which was published earlier this week amid intense media attention. The document, which dates back to the second or third century, offers a positive view of Judas, the betrayer of Christ.
The content of the document was branded heretical by the early fathers of the Christian Church and Pope Benedict himself strongly reaffirmed the traditional view of Judas on Thursday.
"There's a lot of talk about Judas's betrayal and nobody realises that it's happening all over again," said Father Cantalamessa. "Christ is still being sold, not to religious authorities for 30 pieces of silver, but to publishers and bookshops for billions".
The preacher said the underlying problem was that the media was more interested in novelty than in truth. He also said that such questions didn't deserve to be talked about on one of the most important days in the Christian calendar.
"But we can't allow the silence of believers to pass for embarrassment and the good faith of millions of people to be manipulated by the media".
