Of the many extraordinary things we saw, heard and experienced today, the day of Pope Francis’ funeral, we will be left with an anthology of images. And of these one in particular that will make history, that of Trump and Zelenski facing each other on two small chairs inside St. Peter’s Basilica just before the funeral began.
In the margin, it is usually said in the official chronicles of major official events. This, however, is a margin that pulls the whole thing in and spills over with anything but marginal centrality onto the audience of the world bidding farewell to a Pope who in death has become even more of a giant.
It does not even matter perhaps much more what the two leaders said to each other, which we had already analyzed in the reality show also there planetary White House. A reality show that was a terrible tussle. Today in the commotion of the death of the Pontiff of Peace, other tones. Constructive tones, delegations say, meeting continuing at the airport, diplomacies emphasize.
Step forward, they say, in a very complex negotiation for truce first and peace later. Especially for the Kiev leader, cornered by his U.S. ally. But beyond the significance in the narrow geopolitical sense, one image is valuable in itself. There says a gentleman, me, who has driven giant television machines on such important episodes as precisely the deaths of the popes.
An image not only denotes (context and chronicle) but connotes (symbol, emotions, meaning and unconscious meanings). That image on the connotative level tells us that Francis, even in the moment of his last earthly journey, leaves an important legacy: the commitment to Peace, which passes through dialogue, through encounter that becomes confrontation.
And Rome once again, for a day or even a few hours, is back caput mundi. Rome capoccia of a hopefully less infamous world, in the words of the Roman Venditti’s masterpiece.
The article Rome caput mundi comes from TheNewyorker.
