"The Chosen" Meets the New Pope at the Vatican

Lead actor Jonathan Roumie and fellow cast and crew stopped off in Rome after shooting parts of Season 6 in southern Italy.

Jonathan Roumie shakes hands with Pope Leo XIV this week in St. Peter's Square in The Vatican. Image: The Chosen/from Instagram.

What a finale for members of The Chosen after wrapping the Italian leg of production of the sixth season of the hit series about the life of Christ. The man who plays the Savior, Jonathan Roumie, led a delegation from the show for a visit with Pope Leo XIV during a general audience this week in St. Peter's Square.

Jonathan Roumie and Pope Leo XIV pose for a selfie at The Vatican earlier this week. Image: The Vatican/from Instagram.

The two Americans shook hands as they spoke and even posed together with the rest of the cast for what Roumie called "The selfie seen 'round the world." In a social media post that includes that image, the self-described born-again Catholic expressed his gratitude, stating he was "joyfully dazed and beyond humbled" to meet the Pontiff, who is the first U.S. citizen to become Pope.

This is not, however, the first time that Roumie - a 50-year-old native New Yorker - has met the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Back in 2021, he and show creator and director Dallas Jenkins were likewise greeted in St. Peter's Square by Leo's predecessor, the late Pope Francis.

Also this week at The Vatican, the team behind The Chosen put on a screening of an episode from Season 5. Their stopover in Rome came on the heels of three weeks of shooting of the Crucifixion scene in the town of Matera in southern Italy. That will be featured in Season 6, which is scheduled to release next year, as Christian Film Blog reported here.

One final note about the fifth season: the last of its three installments will come out on Prime Video this Sunday, June 29th. The Amazon streaming platform is the only place to watch the latest season until it releases on the show's app in September.