(SEE BELOW FOR UPDATE WITH INTERVIEW WITH FEMEN PROTESTER JANA ZDHANOVA)
After my last post “The Roman Holiday Hamster”, I vowed I would take a break from writing about the Vatican and concentrate on Christmas. It took a lot of effort, but I resisted the temptation to write about Pope Francis’ Christmas speech to the Roman Curia—a verbal flagellation listing the 15 “sicknesses” of the Vatican curia. It was powerful and interesting, but I am not going to go into it here. I also resisted the temptation to write about the Pope’s letter to Christians in the Middle East on December 23. I did not write about the Pope’s Christmas Mass on the night of the 24th, or the Urbi and Orbi Christmas Day message to the world. It would have ruined my Christmas.
However, I cannot resist the temptation to write about the topless protester who barged her way into the nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square on Christmas Day.
Not long after Pope Francis delivered his Christmas message from the window on the balcony at the center of St. Peter’s Basilica, Jana Zhdanova, a Ukrainian feminist activist with the group FEMEN, shoved through the crowds around the Vatican’s nativity scene and with the words written “God is Woman” written on across her bare chest, grabbed the baby Jesus out of his crib. A Vatican gendarme swooped down, grabbed Jana, covered her with his cape and struggled to get the baby Jesus out of her hands. She continued to yell, “God is Woman.”
APTN got a pretty funny, if fuzzy, video off a tourist showing the gendarme struggling to call on his radio for help while the naked blond is squirming around in his arms. I think that gendarme will remember this Christmas.
The crowd raised iphones and ipads to get a show and cheered and jeered during the brief incident. After a few minutes Zhdanova was put in a car and taken away. A gendarme then carefully put back the Baby Jesus.
Then the Vatican did something unusual, they put Jana Zhdanova in a cell for the night accusing her of obscene acts in a public place. The Pope’s spokesman said that she her act was intended to “intentionally offend the religious feelings” of others.
Not many people get held inside the small Vatican cells. The last one I wrote about was Pope Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, who was arrested for copying documents in the Papal apartment and leaking them to the press. See blog post “The Pope’s Butler Did It”
Perhaps it sounds a little disrespectful on my part, but I can’t help wondering about what Christmas night was like in that cell. Who were her guards? The gendarmes or Swiss Guards? Did they loan her some clothes to cover up a bit? What did they give her to eat – some Christmas leftovers?
After meeting with a Vatican prosecutor Saturday morning, Zdhanova was freed. She was ordered never to set foot on Vatican property again. (I have been trying to get in touch with Zdhanova to hear about her experience being held in a Vatican cell, but no luck so far. I will update this post if I manage to contact her).
And just in case some of you have not been to St. Peter’s Square at Christmas time, here are a few photos from my visit yesterday with my family.
I almost forgot — I have written before on this blog about a woman arrested by the Vatican and sentenced to death by a Pope. It was a long, long time ago and that was Beatrice Cenci. See blog post: Spooked and Inspired by Beatrice.
I think I would rather by Jana Zhdanova than Beatrice Cenci.
UPDATE
I got in touch with Femen protester, or as she calls herself Sextremist, Jana Zhdanova, by email and she answered a few of my questions about her experience being the first woman in recent history held as a prisoner locked up inside the Vatican.
Jana, who is Ukranian, told me that she is 26 and living as “a refugee in France”. She said the Vatican cell “wasn’t a five star hotel” but it was big and clean. She said there were Vatican gendarmes guarding her and not Swiss Guards. She said they were much more polite than police usually are and they tried to speak to her in English.
The gendarmes gave her back her clothes, and when she asked for some books gave her a book on the history of the Vatican in English and novels translated into Russian, “After Dark” by Haruki Murakami and “The White Castle” Orhan Pamuk.
Jana said before she met with the Vatican prosecutor she had no idea what she was going to be charged with or how long she would be held. When she was told she would meet with the Vatican prosecutor she said she prepared a long speech in Russian, but in the end the gendarmes said they would take the copy of the speech and keep it, there was no need for the prosecutor to see it.
She told me that she was charged under article 3 of the Vatican Penal code and articles 142, 402 and 490 and the prosecutor warned her that she cannot step foot on Vatican territory again.
I asked her what she had written in her speech and she said, “I tried to explain my position on why I think that God is a woman. God can only be a woman.” She then gave an explanation of why she thinks this is the case concluding, “I call on all churchmen to correct their historical error, and leave a place for woman in the host of Gods and respect her holy rights to control over her body.”
Jana said she “would be glad to repeat the same act” in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow on January 7th.
Given the experience of the “Pussy Riot” group, I am guessing that a repeat protest in Moscow could lead to imprisonment and probably the Russian police are not going to be as hospitable as the Vatican Gendarmes.
. . as has been said many times, ‘When god created man, she knew she had made a mistake!’ Have a great time with your family and may your life and blog posts continue to be interesting.
I do hope that you will, at some point, write about the extraordinary, bizarre perhaps, excoriation that the Pope launched against the rest of the Vatican. If Francis thought he was meeting obstacles and obstruction in his efforts to “reform” the Curia and the hierarchy, he has certainly guaranteed that her will encounter even more now.
Philip, I think your description is absolutely correct. It was an “extraordinary excoriation” — it was as though he were launching a firebomb into the Curia. We were all amazed watching the faces of the Cardinals. I will try to find a moment to come back to it with a blog post. We also went over the 15 “illnesses” that the Pope mentioned in the office and we decided that if you removed them from the context — some of his criticism would work in almost any work place — who wants colleagues with “funeral faces”, he is right about the dangers of the “terrorism of gossip” and destroying a colleague by speaking badly about them behind there back. He is right about people who spend all their time flattering there superiors etc etc. Basically we started thinking that as harsh as the criticism was, it also had some common sense instructions from the man in charge that would be useful in any workplace.
Perhaps Pope Francis is adverting to the sniping, gossip, intrigue and slander that allegedly was part of the cause and motivation behind Pope Benedict’s resignation (and you know that I am, as an agnostic, still something of a fan of Benedict). As you say, it is hardly something that is confined to the Vatican and Curia. My interest in it is principally a political one, rather than religious or theological. But Pope Francis is 78 years old, is not in great health – he has put on an alarming amount of weight since his election – and one wonders whether he has the stamina to achieve what he wants in the time available to him.
Philip, you are absolutely right. There can be no doubt that Pope Francis was referring to dysfunctional behavior that began in the Vatican Curia well before his time, and was the real reason behind Benedict XVI’s resignation. Interestingly, during the speech, the Vatican TV camera panned to the former Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, he has been widely denounced for creating a lot of the problems in the Curia under Benedict XVI and I wondering if the cameraman did it on purpose. I agree with you also that Pope Francis has little time to get the massive cleanup job done. I think he has a sense of that too and therefore is always in a rush. Apparently one of the reasons the Cardinals chose Bergoglio in the last Conclave was so that he would clean up the Curia. I also don’t know how long he can keep up the pace. In addition to the heavy lifting at the Vatican, he has gotten himself neck deep in geo-politics, and is undertaking strenous trips — he leaves shortly for Sri Lanka and the Philippnes, so we shall see.
St Peter’s at Christmas is absolutely beautiful! Merry Christmas to you and your family. Thank you for sharing the interesting stories all year long!
Well it takes all kinds, doesn’t it. She chose a platform intended to get lots of publicity, that’s for sure. Buon anno Trisha, to you and yours. Looking forward to reading many more of your posts.
Wow, bare-breasted in December. And in Rome no less. She is a braver woman than I. I hope you can contact her to hear her side of the story. We in the U.S. had a bit of Nativity mischief – well, much more than mischief, really, this one strayed into the world of true vandalism when someone removed the baby Jesus statue from a Haverhill, MA nativity scene and replaced it with, get ready for it, a pig’s head. Just what the point was, I will never know. However it doubtless horrified all onlookers.
On the subject of popes and St. Peter’s, I read that Ali Agca laid flowers on Pope John Paul II’s tomb. What did people in Rome think of that?
I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas, and I wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2015!
I don’t think Ali Agca has any fans in Rome. People thought it was curious, but were happy when he left. It is interesting how the Vatican attracts all the crazies.
Well this is something I didn’t see in the N YT. Hope you are getting some Mamma time this week!
L/D
Fascinating, and we have heard nothing at all about this! I hope you get to interview her, because while her point is obvious, the details of how she became irrationally angry about it would interesting. The guard is smiling, so I think he was enjoying this. AND, I wonder where his right hand is!
Every conversation I have been in, with friends, family and at church, the past few days, the Pope’s telling off the Cardinals has been a subject of comment, some delight, and general agreement with the Pope. People are proud of him for not putting up with it, and for fighting back. Everyone wishes him well. Obviously, I travel in a certain crowd. I’m sure he has had criticism. But you can tell someone to tell him a lot of Americans are delighted. And I mean some Catholics are, too.
Good photo from Chiara! Takes after her Mom, always on the lookout for a good story —
I wish I was there when such feminists give such shows!! Anyway, if such thing would have happened in either the 1600’s or the 1800’s….torture and death penalty for sure for this woman. In the 1600’s she would have been blamed for witchcraft, hence burnt alive. In the 1800’s instead, probably just hanged!
ha!! You missed the show! You are absolutely right — this topless protester got off easy– a few centuries ago, it would have been all over!
Great post. Wow the Vatican sure attracts it’s share of pazzi! Buon Anno, Cristina
It sure does!! Happy 2015 to you too Cristina!