Harmless enough, though viewers deserve something a little more thoughtful at a time when some Catholics are beginning to wonder if this pontificate will amount to more than a series of lovely gestures.

If you are in any doubt as to the impetus behind the project then look to its title. No film called A Man of his Word is going to draw much blood from the subject.

It's a maddening film because, ultimately, it seems sycophantic to, and unchallenging of, the papal institution and Catholicism themselves.

It is, like its own subject, an embodiment of more elusive answers and ethics, but its food for thought has the lasting nutritional value of a Communion wafer.