On August 25, in conversation with Bishop Robert Barron, Shia LaBeouf36, revealed his conversion to Catholicism, and made reference to the beginning of reconciliation with his mother that had meant that change in his life. Two days later, his mother, Shayna Saide, died at the age of 80 from heart failure in a Los Angeles hospital, with his son at his bedside. And on September 2 she attended the Venice Biennale at the premiere of Padre Pioof Abel Ferrarathe film that has meant a transcendental turnaround for him.
Too many emotions in just one week. Shia did not make a statement at the Italian festival, but did offer The Hollywood Reporter some of your experiences these days. Like the satisfaction that his mother, of Jewish origin, who had always been “deeply interested in God and in spirituality but she had never known Him”, opened up to Him in her last moments. The “greatest gift” he gave his son was to manifest “the need for a relationship with God” with a “last conviction of faith”: “She was a good woman. God bless you, mom,” said the actor.
He also reiterated how the months leading up to his conversion were.
An alley… with an exit
As is known, in December 2020 he was accused by his ex-girlfriend, the singer FKA Twigs, of sexual and emotional violence and of having deliberately infected him with a sexually transmitted disease. LaBeouf has denied that account of the events, even publicly acknowledging in her statement that he misbehaved with her: “I hurt that woman … She was looking for my pleasure, it was selfish, self-centered, dishonest, inconsiderate“.
As a result of these complaints, he sought psychological treatment and announced his retirement from the profession. He even considered committing suicide, as he told Monsignor Barron: “I had a gun on the table.” He felt a shame that almost prevented him from breathing.
As part of his therapy, he prayed to “a indefinite higher power“, which his therapist invited him to personify in the waves of the sea until God rescued him. As a child he had received both Jewish initiation rites (on his mother’s side) and Christians (he has a paternal uncle who is a Protestant pastor).
The friars and Mel
Shia spent a few months living off camping in his motorhome, and that was how, in a chat, the director Abel Ferrara proposed him to play Padre Pio. He then went to the Franciscan seminary of Santa Inés, in California, in whose parking lot he parked his vehicle. Knowing the friars he also met Christ: “They fed me, they brought me the Gospel, they gave me back my laughter and my smile, they invited me to their silence, they taught me to pray“.
At the same time, he studied the figure of Saint Pio of Pietrelcinain whose stigmata and miracles he claims to believe bluntly, answering with a resounding “yes” when asked that question.
But his Franciscan friends did not know the traditional mass, which LaBeouf had to celebrate for his interpretation, since it was the one that the Capuchin saint said all his life, deceased before Novus Ordo post-conciliar
To whom to turn? Shia knew it well: a Mel Gibsonwhom he knew “related” to the subject, since the Australo-American filmmaker is well known for his bad relations with the Second Vatican Council.
“[Mel] he was wary of me,” she explains: “Many years ago, I went to his house and told him to his face that his religious and political views were a hindrance for his work. He laughed and told me to read the book of Maccabees. But when I broke down, he always supported me.”
“I like that boy”
Indeed, Shia LaBeouf’s life has been, like Gibson’s, turbulent and dotted with scandals, including arrests and drugs. In one of those bad moments, however, Mel did not join the chorus of her detractors. “I think he himself is suffering,” pleaded for him in 2014: “People point their fingers at him, they say if it’s this, if it’s that… It’s easy to judge. But I’m sure he’s going through something personal, very painful, cathartic, something he has to exorcise to get out of there. He’ll get it and come back and be fine. I like that boy. i think he is good“.
So when LaBeouf explained what he needed, Gibson didn’t hesitate and drove him to a parish in the Institute of Christ the King in Oakland (California), where he was taught to celebrate mass with the composure that appears in the film: “I went there with brother Álex, from San Lorenzo. Father [Benjamin] norman He spent time after his daily Mass teaching me Latin and how to properly serve traditional Mass.
Shia LaBeouf and Mia Goth were married for eight years, divorced and have reconciled, having a son together this spring.
The rest is known history. Shia explained that in the traditional mass itself he discovered the authenticity of the faith: “There are languages of which you don’t need to know the words… I deeply experienced what was happening there, and that is more powerful than knowing each and every one of them.” words, because it takes you out of the intellectual and introduces you in feeling and in beauty” and not only in the “rationalistic and logical realm of words, words, words… The traditional mass introduces me to the realm of feeling of the sacred what you connect to, precisely because I don’t know what the words mean.”
Faith has come to Shia’s life at the same time as her first child, as he became a father this March after having resumed his almost decade-long relationship with the actress. mia goth, with whom he was married and divorced. From this new family situation he draws a lesson: “Love is more important than art.”