One pope dies and another pope is made, and once again the folk wisdom, while simplifying with its cynicism, has hit the nail on the head.
In the phase of great complexity that the world is going through, the Church, between the death of Francis and the installation of Leo XIV, has recovered an extraordinary worldwide media solemnity. Above all, it has regained its centrality, both spiritual and political.
I would call it in a single slogan The Geopolitics of St. Peter’s, with a double homage, physical and metaphysical: on the one hand the beauty and architectural grandeur of Bernini’s basilica and square (the greats of the earth and the hierarchies of the clergy reduced to neat geometric arrays colored in the shots from above), and then the symbolic suggestion of the ceremonies and rites, the austerity of Latin becoming the language of Power.
A Power that seems only partly human and secular, however, it is as if the blowing of the Roman wind (remember the violent gusts during John Paul II’s funeral in 2005?) were also that of a Holy Spirit who has descended among us to bring the urgency of a peace always invoked and always postponed, beginning with the Ukraine crisis but without removing the anguish of the humanitarian tragedy that is devastating Gaza.
The great of the Earth talked to each other, in twos, threes, fours, together, talked to each other there in St. Peter’s but also in the Roman diplomatic and institutional offices of our government. Talking, dialogue, the art of meeting and listening. America reconnected with Europe, Zelensky found comfort, alliances and dignity.
Perhaps Putin will be forced to abandon melina and missiles, who knows where direct dialogue with Trump will lead. And even Netanyahu, pulled by the ears by Pope Prevost in his papal commencement address, is back to talking peace. The journey to all the open crises is still long and troubled, but the Geopolitics of St. Peter’s in a month has done memorable things, the Vatican’s new number one even proposing it as a neutral venue for peace in Ukraine.
We will stop here now, in a few hours we will tell the facts, we will do our job, the chronicle, steps forward and steps back. But without forgetting the great lesson that once again gave us a millennial Church that knows how to read the world’s disturbances.
The article The geopolitics of St. Peter’s comes from TheNewyorker.
