Some of you may remember Franco Zeffirelli, the director of Romeo and Juliet and Jesus of Nazareth.

It’s really too bad that Baz Luhrmann overshadowed Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet with a new snazzy version starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. It’s also too bad that Mel Gibson overshadowed Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth with The Passion of the Christ.

Now Zeffirelli has some ideas for the Vicar of Christ whom he claims does not have “a happy image”.

“Coming after a media-savvy pope like John Paul II is a difficult task … Benedict XVI still communicates coldly, in a way that is not suited with what is happening around him,” Zeffirelli said.

“It’s an issue I have been discussing with people who have key roles in the Vatican,” said Zeffirelli, who has directed some Vatican television events.

“The Pope does not smile much, but he is an intellectual. He has a very rigid Bavarian structure,” he said.

Zeffirelli, 84, added that papal robes were “too sumptuous and flashy.” “What is needed is the simplicity and sobriety seen in the other echelons of the Church,” he said.

Read it all from Reuters.