Watch Martin Scorsese Teach You a History Lesson During a Sneak Peek at ‘The Saints’

Martin Scorsese may be one of the godfathers of cinema, but now the iconic auteur is turning his lens to the Holy Father.

Scorsese hosts, narrates, and executive produces Fox Nation original docudrama streaming series, “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints.” IndieWire can reveal a sneak peek at the show, which debuts November 17. The premiere episode centers on Joan of Arc, with each installment centering on a different saint.

“Joan led her army on a relentless march north,” Scorsese says onscreen in the premiere episode clip. “Every victory on the battlefield took her one step closer to her ultimate goal.”

The docuseries includes other saints like John the Baptist, Sebastian, Maximilian Kolbe, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, and Moses the Black. The series will encompass 2,000 years of history to tell the story of “eight men and women who risked everything to embody humanity’s most noble and complex trait — faith.”

For a first look at the Maximilian Kolbe installment, Scorsese begins the story of how Kolbe was visited by the Virgin Mary when he was a child.

“He was born with the name Raymond in 1894 during a period where Poland just didn’t exist as a nation, because it was split in three ways by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian empire. He grew up in a devout Catholic household in a devout Catholic culture,” Scorsese says of the patron saint of prisoners.

“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” will release weekly episodes through December 8. Per the official press release, the series will be unveiled in two parts, with the final four episodes airing in April 2025 to be “spanning the Holy season.”

Scorsese recently told AP that “The Saints” has been in the works for a while.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for years,” he said. “I tried doing this back in 1980 with RAI Television in Rome. Then it fell apart and I put the energies into ‘The Last Temptation of Christ,’ ‘Kundun,’ ‘Silence’ — the ones that were obviously in that realm of what you may call spirituality.”

Scorsese added of collaborating with Fox Nation, “Here, they came by and it was actually going to happen. I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go with this.’ They said, ‘This is the outlet.’ I said, ‘Alright, as long as we have the freedom to express what we want.’ They went with the scripts. They went with the shoot. They went with the cuts. Now what I think is: Do we take these thoughts or expressions and only express them to people who agree with us? It’s not going to do us any good. I’m talking about keeping an open mind.”

“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” premieres November 17 on Fox Nation.