"Censorship authorities had banned the movie but I didn't want negatives to be burnt. Thus, based on the advice of a clever friend of mine, an open-minded Jesuit, father Arpa, I went to Genoa to meet a famous Cardinal, who was likely to be elected Pope, to ask him to watch the film. A throne-like chair, with a large red pillow and golden fringes had been put in the middle of the room. The cardinal arrived at 12.30 a.m. on his black Mercedes. I was allowed to remain in the hall and I didn’t know whether the cardinal had really watched the whole movie or had slept throughout it. Probably father Arpa woke the Cardinal up exactly when processions or sacred images were shown. At the end he said: ' Poor Cabiria, we must do something for you!' I think he just had to make a phone call. Someone publicly accused me of being a sort of Richelieu, who didn’t fight openly, but rather conspired behind the scenes. Luckily enough at that time it was possible to waste time in this type of debates. Anyway, the film was saved, upon a condition: the shot of the man with the bag had to be removed, as the Cardinal had required. [...] The episode was inspired by an extraordinary character with whom I spent two or three nights in Rome: a kind philanthropist, a magician, who later had a vision dedicated to a particular mission: giving poor people all the food and clothing he had on his bag. This happened every day. I saw fairy things when I was with him. For example, when we opened a manhole and expected to find only mice and mud, we found a little old lady who was asleep. In the corridors of a sumptuous palace in Via del Corso – where the Socialist Party’s headquarters are now located - there were tramps who slept until five o'clock in the morning, as the night warden had let them in. The man's knew all these people, he gave one of them an injection, and another one some food. In the movie I imagined Cabiria when she met him on the Appia Antica road, while she was going home at dawn, and was angry as a customer had not paid her. She saw the man holding the bag leaving a car and heading for tufa quarries. He then stopped on the edge of a chasm and called a woman. A nasty old whore called ‘the Atomic Bomb’ came out of nowhere; she was living miserably then. Then Cabiria agreed to go back home with the man by car and was very impressed by his stories. It was a very touching little shot, but I was forced to take it out, maybe because it upset some Catholic circles. Isn’t it ridiculous that when Cabiria was screened, the Mayor of Rome protested because I had put the whores on a site - Passeggiata Archeologica (archeological promenade) - that he had tried to upgrade?