‘Tolkien’ director praises Father Francis Morgan as model priest

This past weekend at WonderCon there was a panel featuring director Dome Karukoski, and cast members Anthony Boyle, Patrick Gibson, Tom Glynn-Carney, and Nicholas Hoult, from the upcoming bio-pic Tolkien on the early life of Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien.

The film will primarily focus on the friendships Tolkien established prior to World War I and how his experiences during childhood and young adulthood influenced his writing of The Lord of the Rings.

The panel was moderated by Cliff Broadway from TheOneRing.net and one of the first questions from the audience came from a woman asking about how Tolkien’s Christianity would be featured in the film.

The film’s director, Dome Karukoski, responded by saying, “Catholicism was a very instrumental element in his life. He was a devout Catholic and his mother [converted] to Catholicism and that caused a bit of a stir in the family. We do touch on that time.”

Much of the Tolkien family were Baptists and intensely opposed to Catholicism. However, Tolkien’s mother began attending a “high” Anglican church, which resembles in many external forms the traditions of the Catholic Church. It did not take long for his mother to convert to Catholicism, but it created a great deal of tension in the Tolkien family. Tolkien believed that the constant stress his mother experienced may have led to her early death.

Before she died, his mother assigned guardianship of Tolkien and his brother to Francis Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. Father Francis was a major father-figure in Tolkien’s life and guided him throughout his childhood and even into his adult life.

Karukoski said at the WonderCon panel, “Father Francis is a wonderful character. After his parents passed away, Father Francis, his Catholic priest, became his guardian and he was an amazing fellow and as we portray in the film with kindness. Because everything you read about Father Francis, he would have deserved his own film. He was gentle…you often see Catholic priests being [portrayed] as harsh, perhaps [viewed] in a more negative [way] in a societal manner. Father Francis was everything else. He was, what I think, a Catholic priest [should] be for a young growing man like Tolkien.”

Father Francis is portrayed by Star Trek actor Colm Meaney.

It’s unclear how much screen time Father Francis will have in the Tolkien movie, but it appears that the depiction of the Catholic priest will focus on his gentleness and fatherly role in the life of Tolkien.

The movie will be released in theaters on May 10, 2019.