Legendary Hollywood film-maker Martin Scorsese has been talking candidly about how his Catholic faith has influenced his work, his life and his attitude to society.

In a lengthy interview with Antonio Spadaro for the New York-based Catholic magazinr Commonweal, Mr Scorsese admits that his parents weren’t particularly religious at all, but his experiences at a Manhattan Catgholic grammar school run the Sisters of Charity impacted him significantly.

“That gave me another structure and another way of thinking about life. I was seven or eight years old, and where we lived was a very difficult place,” he told Commonweal.

“The area was known as the “Devil’s Mile”; a few blocks west was Mulberry Street, called “Murder Mile.” As a kid, I was thrown into the middle of all this, and I found that the only place I could find a sense of refuge, peace, and protection was inside Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the first Catholic church in New York.”

As he grew older Scorcese says he served as an altar boy and even entered a seminary, before realising it wasn’t the right path for him.

“I began to understand that faith wasn’t something you just practiced in church but “imitating Christ had to be something you translated into daily life. How, I wondered, could I take those elements of love and compassion, which meant so much to me when I was growing up, out into the streets and into the world, which was so violent and full of conflict?

“That’s how I learned what faith is: by losing it, doubting it, coming back to it, being gifted with the ability to make films, and finding a kind of faith in that. Filmmaking is a gift from God, and a very powerful one, because you can touch a lot of people. I’ve come to understand that rather than a conviction of faith, I have a trust in faith. I trust there is faith—yes, there are doubts, at times, but really it’s a more constant searching, a constant attempt at living with faith. It’s about learning to adapt to whichever way the wave of faith takes you.’

Asked about how he approaches his film-making, Mr Scorcese said that “it’s like a prayer, because I’m doing what I was made to do by God. The work is a prayer: it has less to do with success, whatever that means, than with exploration of the soul. When I make a film, I learn to be a better person, and so the film expresses my yearning to be better. When I do that, I come to a kind of peace with myself—and maybe others do, too. That’s grace. I don’t know what else to call it.”

You can read Martin Scroceses’ full interview with Commonweal magazine here.