Angel & Demons premieres in Rome

There's good news for fans of Da Vinci Code. The sequel to the 2006 movie, Angels & Demons starring Tom Hanks premiered on Monday night in Rome. Angels & Demons reunites the two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks with director Ron Howard, who made Da Vinci Code.

In the new film, based on a bestseller by Dan Brown, Langdon (Hanks) stumbles on the Illuminati, which plans to destroy the Catholic Church. According to the novel, the organisation did not become violent until the 17th Century.

Speaking about the Illuminati whose name means 'The Enlightened Ones', Brown says they consists of physicists, mathematicians and astronomers. In the 1500s, they held secret meetings because they were concerned about the church's inaccurate teachings, Brown argues. They were dedicated to scientific truth. And the Vatican didn't like that.

In the novel and the movie, the Church also becomes a victim. Recently, Howard fought back the charge that the film is anti-Church in an article in The Huffington Post: 'Let me be clear: neither I nor Angels & Demons are anti-Catholic,' he wrote.

'And let me be a little controversial: I believe Catholics, including most in the hierarchy of the Church, will enjoy the movie for what it is: an exciting mystery, set in the awe-inspiring beauty of Rome. After all, in Angels & Demons, Professor Robert Langdon teams up with the Catholic Church to thwart a vicious attack against the Vatican. What, exactly, is anti-Catholic about that?'