Noted Indian director Shekhar Kapur's sequel to the 1998 film "Elizabeth" has just opened across theatres here and has already made news with Catholics angrily branding it as "anti-papist propaganda".

Kapur, the director of popular Bollywood films such as "Mr India", "Masoom" and "Bandit Queen", is the unlikely interpreter of Tudor history, and of that seminal moment in Britain's story - the repulsing of the Spanish Armada.

The sequel to his acclaimed "Elizabeth", titled "Elizabeth: The Golden Age", stars Cate Blanchett, Clive Owen, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Hollander, Abbie Cornish and Samantha Morton.

It is billed as a thrilling tale of an era - the story of one woman's crusade to control love, crush enemies and secure her position as a beloved icon of the western world.

The film's synopsis says: "As Elizabeth's cousin Mary Stuart conspires with Philip of Spain to topple the throne, Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's trusty advisor works tirelessly to protect her from the many plots and conspiracies against her.

"Preparing to go to war to defend her empire, Elizabeth struggles to balance royal duties with an unexpected vulnerability in her attraction to Raleigh."

But as people thronged to theatres, criticism mounted, mainly from Catholics from Rome, about the alleged distortion of history portrayed in the film. Kapur and the film's producers have so far not commented on the criticism.

According to Franco Cardini, a historian with close ties with the Vatican, the film "so profoundly and perversely distorts history (that it) cannot be judged a good film".

The Daily Telegraph reported him as saying from Rome: "The enemy is always the same - Catholicism and above all the Holy See and the pope. The offence is continuous and very dire."

He said Elizabeth I was portrayed as a strong and courageous queen "capable of donning armour while being a passionate woman who is in love".

Cardini said her Catholic adversary, King Philip II of Spain, "is naturally a caricature of a ferocious fanatic, who uses his rosary like a weapon and wanders around madly".

And the defeat of the Spanish Armada, according to Cardini, "is portrayed as a shining victory for free thought against the darkness of the Inquisition, of liberty against tyranny and so on".

Cardini said the attacks on the Catholic Church in the film stemmed from knowledge among other faiths that "without Catholicism, Christianity would lose its true fulcrum".

He also pointed out it was to the credit of Philip and the pope that they went to the aid of Venice when it was threatened by the Turks, unlike Elizabeth, who concentrated on destabilising France.

Kapur has compared taking on the direction of "Elizabeth" to Richard Attenborough tackling "Gandhi".

"I couldn't have made a film about Gandhi," he said last week. "I couldn't have carried the burden of that story. It's too much part of my psyche. Maybe it would have been the same for some British directors making a film about Elizabeth."

The idea driving the first Elizabeth film was virginity. Kapur told the Guardian: "We chose to see virginity as a political statement rather than a historical fact." In "Elizabeth: The Golden Age", the central idea is the difficulty of being a living icon.

Kapur said that he drew on parallels with Indira Gandhi for the first film, and with Princess Diana for the second. "If you can't see our own times and lives in a film, there's no reason to make it."

The Catholic News Service, which is run by the United States Bishops Conference, said: "With the single exception of Mary, Queen of Scots, all the Catholics in the film are twisted, embittered intriguers."

The National Catholic Register added: "The climax, a weakly staged destruction of the Spanish Armada, is a crescendo of Church-bashing imagery: rosaries floating amid burning flotsam, inverted crucifixes sinking to the bottom of the ocean, the rows of ominous berobed clerics sinking away in defeat."

It said that the film was more damaging to the Catholic Church than "The Da Vinci Code".

The administrator of Westminster Cathedral has also been criticised for allowing scenes to be shot inside.

Father Ray Blake, of St Mary Magdalen in Brighton, said: "The film damages the Church throughout the world and does a disservice to truth."