A pope who already pleases and amazes. From the ‘beginning, the disarming and disarming peace.
Then today, meeting with the world press, he threw the stone into the great pond of contemporary communication: disarm the words and we will disarm the world.
A mission not only to share but to espouse in full, and one that involves not only words but also images; historically I am a television journalist and know well the emotional, symbolic, unconscious power of images.
But words are also Power. They are action or otherwise anticipate and suggest it. They are not mere verbal signs, poker cards in TV talk.
When the Mafia kills a rival, it slanders him first. It takes away his image, reputation, works on symbols.
When one speaks out of propaganda and superficiality, too much, of World War III, one already makes it possible on the virtual plane. One removes a taboo, an insurmountable limit of public discourse.
But Father Leo XIV meant more: the journey toward truth that information must make is not divorced from ethics. Informing is not just an aseptic sign operation. It has to do with an assumption of responsibility and relationship with History.
Of course we would like our words, finally disarmed because they are pure, honest, true, to disarm the powerful of the Earth, especially the most threatening ones. We would like our commitment to bring peace to Gaza, to put an end to the butchery in the Dombass where young Ukrainians and Russians have been losing their lives for more than three years.
Geopolitics is the novel of mediation but also of brutality. However, as Borges said, even if we build a palace on sand we must think, and be convinced, that we are building it on stone.
The article The disarming and disarming words comes from TheNewyorker.
