I imagined a path that could soon lead to the creation of an institution functioning as a Central Archive for the permanent and organized preservation, according to scientific criteria, of the historical audiovisual assets of the entities of the Holy See and the universal Church.” This is how Pope Francis expressed in a message to the members of the MAC Foundation – Audiovisual Memories of Catholicism, established in March 2023 to address the cultural urgency of recovering, preserving, and enhancing the historical audiovisual heritage and related documentary material related to Catholicism. The main working guidelines are preservation and accessibility, as well as cultural, academic, and educational impact.

According to Chiara Sbarigia, President of Cinecittà S.p.A., “the intersection of different skills, brought together in MAC, will allow the emergence and comparison of materials that are disconnected from each other and often, for this reason, unpublished. The Cinematographic Educational Union, translated with the acronym L.U.C.E, was founded with a primarily educational function, a function that is still active today and has merged into the company Cinecittà SpA. The same ‘corporate’ fate has befallen the Luce Archive, registered in the ‘Memory of the World – Unesco’ Registry, representing the historical and cultural memory of our country and being an irreplaceable documentary source for the understanding of world history. The composite nature of the Istituto Luce and the Historical Archive, as well as the commitment to make it increasingly accessible and usable, have convinced us to enthusiastically participate in the precious project of the MAC Foundation, aimed at enhancing the documentary heritage related to Catholicism and making it available to generations of scholars, students, and even simple enthusiasts.