Pope invites Oprah, Matt Damon and Ari Emanuel to the Vatican 'to help improve Catholic Church's image in the media'

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Producer Brian Grazer and media mogul David Geffen are also on the list of invitees
The private audience with the Pope is expected to take place sometime this fall

Published: 16:05 EST, 5 August 2015 | Updated: 12:42 EST, 6 August 2015

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What do television mogul Oprah Winfrey, fast-talking Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel and Academy Award winner Matt Damon have in common?

All three have been invited to a special audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican this coming fall.

The powerful trio, along with a handful of other show business heavyweights, have made it onto an exclusive shortlist to meet with the pontiff in order to discuss ways to improve the portrayal of the Catholic Church in Western media.

You are cordially invited: Oprah Winfrey (left) and Ari Emanuel have been invited to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican this fall

PR problem: Pope Francis reportedly has invited the Hollywood heavyweights to discuss ways to improve the portrayal of the Catholic Church in Western media.

Emanuel, 54, the younger brother of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, will be joined at the audience by his colleague at William Morris Endeavor talent agency Patrick Whitesell, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Also on the list of invitees for the high-level meeting with the 266th Vicar of Christ is the 44-year-old Bourne franchise star Matt Damon, movie and TV producer Brian Grazer, 64, and DreamWorks and Geffen Records founder David Geffen, 78.

Pope Francis' keen interest in entertainment may come as a surprise to many considering that in a May, the 78-year-old leader of the billion-strong Catholic Church told an Argentine newspaper that he has not watched TV in 25 years.

‘It’s a promise that I made [to] the Virgin of Carmen on the night of July 15, 1990. I told myself: “It’s not for me,”’ he said in an interview with La Vos del Pueblo.

This will not be the first time that the Argentine-born pontiff rubs shoulders with Hollywood's elite.

This past January, the Pope granted director and humanitarian Angelina Jolie a private audience at the Vatican following the screening of her latest film, Unbroken.

WME declined to comment on whether Emanuel, who heads the entertainment agency together with Whitesell, will attend the meeting with the Pope.

Dream team: Producer Brian Grazer (left) and Bourne star Matt Damon (right) also have been invited to the high-level meetin with the pontiff, scheduled or sometime this fall

Media mogul David Geffen, 78, is expected to join Operah and company in the Vatican or the special audience

Man of the people: Pope Francis (L) is pictured greeting members of the faithful during his weekly general audience in the Paolo VI Hall, Vatican City, Wednesday

Pope Francis spreads his message of love in Bolivia in July

The public image of the Catholic Church has suffered greatly in recent years following a series of shocking scandals involving pedophile priests in Europe and the US whose crimes have been covered up for decades.

Since assuming control over the Holy See in 2013, Pope Francis has done much to change public perception of the 2,000-year-old institution by making inroads with members of other faiths, tacitly welcoming homosexuals into the flock, and as recently as Wednesday, publicly declaring that divorcees who remarry should not be treated as outcasts.

In a statement to Daily Mail Online Thursday, a spokesperson for the Varkey Foundation - a non-profit dedicated to improving education for underprivileged children - said that the organization has been in discussions with the Vatican about a possible meeting examining the influence of media on the values of young people.

'Recent media speculation about the purpose and possible participants in such a meeting is totally inaccurate,' the statement read. 'The meeting under consideration is emphatically not a discussion about the reputation of the Catholic Church.'