England: the Church and the "da Vinci Code"” “

A web page entirely dedicated to Mary Magdalen and aimed at the fans of Dan Brown’s bestseller “The da Vinci Code”: the “unprecedented” idea is the brainchild of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales as a way of responding to the questions people ask about Catholicism. The web page can be accessed on the website www.life4seekers.co.uk/ and has been online since 22 July, the day on which St. Mary Magdalen is celebrated in the Church: the saint who plays a central role in Dan Brown’s book. “What we want – explains the director of the information office of the Bishops’ Conference which runs the site, Msgr. Keith Barltrop – is to use this wonderful feast day to give fans of the novel the chance to discover who Mary Magdalen really was”. On the web page a huge range of information on the saint can be found: biographies, images, articles, prayers, biblical references and other links. At the end visitors to the site are invited to “read the Bible, the Fathers of the Church and the Catechism rather than a fake like the ‘Da Vinci Code’”.