On his children's novel Millions:
Was it always such a spiritual story?On the Pope's meeting this month with "cultural" figures:
No, I think it's become more spiritual. I mean, I am Catholic, but saints are not part of an official religion, although they are made by the Vatican. Saints come out of popular culture, because people admire somebody, or they come out of folklore or legend. They're sort of part of the magic of ordinary life; it's not dogma, you're not talking about evangelical religion in that way, you're talking about a popular way of thinking about the transcendence.
To me, having those images from El Greco and Michelangelo mainlined into housing estate in Widness, it's fantastically potent, though for people who are not from that background it might really seem odd and surreal. But if you've been bought up around there as a Catholic, you live on a council estate and then every Sunday morning you open that church door and there's incense, brass, weird music, saints, stained glass. You open this door to the infinite and then you close it again - that's just part of growing up to me.
Holding the symposium in the Sistine Chapel reminds us that Catholics have an astounding artistic heritage to draw on. We tend to idealise art and artists nowadays but the Sistine setting also underlines the fact that great art is parasitic on great power. The field of modern art in Britain, for instance, is sustained by money from banks and advertisers. And it expresses all the things they want to say - that the individual comes first and that life is meaningless (but you can give it meaning by buying stuff).
I think as a Catholic writer I feel my mission is to do what St Paul said and "think on what is good", to remind people that life, even in the worst circumstances, contains the possibility of joy. In a world which is dominated by governments and corporations that feed on fear and misery, this is a profoundly subversive message.
I used to feel anxious about pushing my Catholicism but in fact the two things I've done that have been most warmly received - Millions and God on Trial - are the things in which I was most upfront and honest about my faith.
Frank Cottrell Boyce is a novelist and screenwriter. Millions, directed by Danny Boyle, was released in 2004
