I spent the day at the Vatican today and I had to keep my head low to keep from getting hit, the mud was flying!!! Not literally though. Literally there was just a steady stream of rain and some hail, but there was nothing to stop that metaphorical mud, and it has been flying all week. Reading the Italian papers this week has been a source of great entertainment as all the Cardinals’ and Vatican’s dirty laundry has been allegedly whispered to journalists and credited to “unidentified sources.” Let me give you a few headlines.
La Repubblica: “Do not fornicate and do not Steal” The Two Commandments in the Dossier that Shocked the Pope.”
Il Messaggero: “Poison in the Vatican, Signal to the Conclave, Ratzinger Receives the Three 007 Cardinals”
Corriere Della Sera: “Pedophilia, the (improper) anti-papabili Weapon”
Good Grief. By today the screeching headlines became so loud that the Pope’s spokesman decided to act, but more on that in a moment.
So what is behind this. Let me say up front, that I am not sure, but I will give you my impression. A political campaign is underway to decide the next Pope and various factions are trying to undermine different candidates taking advantage of public opinion and the press.
It started with the Cardinal Mahony move mentioned in my last blog (see Blog post “Counting Down to the Conclave“, but then spread quickly to other Cardinals, as I mentioned in the last post, Cardinal Sean Brady, Cardinal Godfried Daneels and others have been accused of similar cover-ups.
About midweek the second Cardinal controversy blew up. When the Vatileaks case exploded, the Pope asked three Cardinals to form a commission for an internal investigation. They were given a free hand to interrogate whoever they wanted inside the Vatican and their investigation included meetings with everyone from the lowest to Cardinals. They submitted their report to Pope Benedict XVI in December.
See my blog posts on this topic (“The Pope’s Butler Did It“, and “The Butler Takes the Stand“.) When the butler’s trial ended, the Vatican said the case was closed and that was that. This week the Pope’s spokesman Father Lombardi told the press that the commission’s report was not going to be released and the three Cardinals would not be commenting on it and the dossier would be passed on to the next Pope.
That’s when un-sourced sneak previews starting emerging in the Italian press. It is all so sordid and complicated I can’t even describe it. There was plenty of material on the Vatican bank and there were reports of a gay lobby within the Vatican.
Then on Friday, came the announcement that the Pope was sending one of the top officials in the Vatican’s Secretary of State’s office off to Colombia to become the Papal Nunzio there. Hmmm.
Now over this past week the Pope and Cardinals in Rome have been participating in week long Lenten Spiritual exercises. They wrapped it up today and let me give you a quote from the Pope’s words to the members of the Vatican Curia who participated in the exercises with him.
Pope Benedict said: “It almost seems that evil wants to permanently mar creation, to contradict God and to make His truth and His beauty unrecognisable. In a world that is also so marked by evil, the ‘Logos’, eternal beauty and eternal ‘ars’, should appear as the ‘caput cruentatum’.
I never studied Latin and my google translator turns “caput cruentatum” into “bloody head”, I am going to leave the correct translation and interpretation to some of my more intellectual blog readers. (I am hoping Nancy Rockwell of the blog Biteintheapple.com will come to my rescue here)
Following the Pope’s morning comments, the Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, held a surprise briefing telling reporters that it is “deplorable…that there is widespread distribution of often unverified, unverifiable of completely false (information).”
I will be curious to see where it goes from here. There is still plenty of time before the Cardinals will be locked up in the Conclave and forbidden to communicate with the outside world. The Conclave is unlikely to start before March 10th, so I imagine there is more to come. I will keep you updated.
EXTRA NOTES
Just a couple of small sidebar notes. The rules on the Conclave were presented this week to the Vatican press corps by Mons. Juan Arrieta, an expert on Canon Law. A novelty this round: You Tweet, you’re out. Arrieta explained that the law is clear, once the Concalve has begun Cardinals are “Forbidden to communicate with the outside world by post, by radio or by telephone.”
Interestingly a lot of Cardinals, including Papal Contenders (Dolan, Ravasi, and Scola to name a few) do have tweet handles. And, the Vatican’s Secretary of State’s office — the center of power in the Vatican– just opened its own twitter account. It is called @Terzaloggia referring to the third Loggia in the Apostolic Palace where the offices are, not too far from the Papal apartments. Nothing has been tweeted yet, but I will be watching that one closely.
My friend Tiffany Parks of The Pines of Rome Blog wrote a lovely post linking this week’s scandals swirling around the Vatican to “The Borgia’s”. I had the same thought this week. Check out her post here.
On the roof of the Agostinian building where I was working today, my colleagues had a team or workers setting up what looked like a modern-day Coliseum a two story framework for all sorts of TVs from around the world to set up their live positions and studios. There were workers in yellow hardhats putting up metal frames and wooden floors for open-air studios with both St. Peter’s Square, the Basilica and the Papal apartments in view. I must say AP Television has managed to snag about the best view in town.
A highlight of this week was a gift I received from my dear friend Mario Biasetti (see my blog posts on him “The Glamour and Grime of a Foreign TV Correspondent“). I was sitting in a briefing at the Sala Stampa at the Vatican and he called me and told me to come outside because he had brought me a new bike. I ditched the briefing in a flash and hopped on my gorgeous new bike.
FRAZZLED MAMMA NOTE
So, for those of you who are interested in the frazzled Mamma home-front situation here is one last note. I flew out of the Vatican today at 4:15pm and rushed home to make it in time for my weekly Zumba class. Now I am not a very coordinated dancer but the Zumba class is a great chance for me to let off steam once a week, so I do my best never to miss it.
The class is taught by a Nicaraguan dancer named Jairo Ugarte. Jairo has long black curls that he tosses around dramatically as he gyrates. He clearly has a great sense of humor because he always laughs when he sees me desperately trying to keep up with some of the hip-wiggling maneuvers that are beyond my capabilities. I had to explain to him in front of the whole class (I have no shame) that these hips have been through three childbirths and they will never be able to gyrate very effectively. It’s just not going to happen. So, he laughs and lets me continue the class despite my deficiencies. I am grateful because if I wasn’t able to go to Zumba once a week, I would become a tense, uptight, stressed out working Mamma.
After Zumba I came home to find the refrigerator empty (Surprise, surprise). I think there was a container of plum tomatoes with a white, fluffy mold growing on them and Caterina informed me that she had tossed the sour milk. So I whizzed off to the supermarket with my daughters, violating one of the basic Italian women rules — I wore my sweatpants to the supermarket. (See blog post Sweatpants at the Supermarket). Perhaps even worse was my face. “Mamma, your face is sooooo red,” Chiara declared. “You look like a tomato.” (“At least I am not moldy”, I thought.) At the supermarket I noticed there were other women in sweatpants. “Hey,” I thought, “Italian culture is changing.” Then I noticed that all the women in sweats had sexy sweats, and one had a leopard scarf around her neck and they were all wearing make-up. I had an old, torn sweatshirt, sloppy sweats and a tomato red face with no make-up on it. Honestly, what is the point of wearing sweats and then putting make-up on. If you have make-up on it means you don’t intend to sweat, which, after all, is the point of wearing sweats.
I guess I am getting carried away here. I am going to wrap this up because I have to be back at the Vatican at 8am tomorrow morning. The Pope is delivering his last weekly Angelus — the prayers and statements from the window of his Papal apartments that he does every Sunday morning. Tens of thousands of people are expected to be there. Apparently security has been beefed up and according to the Italian papers there will be policemen in the piazza dressed as priests ( not sure if I believe that, but I am going to have my eye out for priests in Ray-bans). To lighten things up a bit I thought I might teach some of my colleagues a few Zumba moves that we could do in St. Peter’s Square. Ha! How about a flash-mob of Zumba dancers under the Pope’s window. Dear me, I need to go to bed.
Yesterday when Bart and I began to read the comments form “unnamed sources” we just could not wait for you, Our Voice at the Vatican. We have never heard anything like this. Perhaps it is Vatican politics at its most rollicking and outrageous, but it surely must be terribly distressing for the Pope and the faithful. I believe the Pope’s quote suggests that now the Word of God is not beautiful, but more closely resembles Christ’s head as it bled from the crown of thorns. I too await Nancy Rockwell’s interpretation.
Zumba! You go girl. That is great. Darn hard work, I am told, and very effective. I bet all the gyrating is a great stress reliever! I am a Pilates devotee. I go for the quiet, inwardly centered tight focus of Pilates. I find it sort of meditative. But I think what ever exercise we choose it is good for body and soul.
Keep these posts coming. Bart and I are positively riveted. By the way, even the talking heads on MSNBC are handicapping the Pope Race. No jive!
Adri — thank your for all your comments. I love hearing from you. I am here at the Vatican this morning and there is more mud flying!! Today — you’ve probably heard — the news is on Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland. There are accusations that he was propositioning priests and sometimes following through using the power of his office to pressure them. Yikes! It just never stops.
We just covered the Pope’s Angelus during which he said he has been called by God to “go up on the mountain” and dedicate himself to “prayer and meditation”. I can understand why he wants to go up on the mountain, down below it is getting awfully messy!
Hi Trisha,
Yes, I just read about Cardinal O’Brien. I wonder if perhaps we are not close upon the proverbial tipping point where so many accusations will be put forth and so much will be made public that real substantive change will occur. At the very least, many souls will be shaken, the Pope’s among them.
I think we may be on the tipping point and it may be better off in the end for the Catholic Church. A lot of people are now suggesting that Benedict’s soul may have been so shaken, as you say, that he chose to resign. God only knows.
Ciao from the Frosinone province. Just imagining your zumba flash mob made me smile. Would really LOVE to see that! Thanks for bringing some clarity to a very confusing vatican-news week.
Thank you Diana– I would love to organize a Zumba flash mob in St. Peter’s Square! That would be a blast. And if it worked, can you imagine how fast it would go viral!
Excellent post! Captures some of the crazy v eloquently. For “salve cruentatum”, it’s a topical reference with Good Friday approaching, as it’s from Bernard of Clairvaux’s poem, addressing Christ’s (bloodied) head crowned with thorns. So I guess the rationale is to recall the self-sacrifice (rather than politicking/power-mongering) and deep scrutiny (avoidance of the superficial) that ought to underpin the church… I hope the next pope is fond of Latin too :-)
Thank you Diana, that is very helpful. I am so hopeless around here without knowing any Latin. As you probably read in my earlier post, it was an ANSA journalist (Giovanna Chirri) who got the big scoop on the Pope’s resignation because she understood when he announced it in Latin.
Loved your bit about wearing sweats to the supermarket. One day I did it “to rebel”.
Thank you Heather, always great to know there is another rebel in the ranks.
Thanks so much for inviting me to respond, Trisha! Your post raises fascinating questions, and you raise them without judgment, like the careful – and artful – reporter you are!
The Pope’s remarks are an allusion, and the question, ‘to what?’ is joined by the question, ‘does the allusion point us back to the rumors that are plaguing him now?’ rather than to the piety he suggests.
The philosophical argument about truth and beauty is age old, and present in many sources as well as in the Bible, and at times is meant to pull truth away from its western bent toward cold analytics, but also, at times, pulls beauty back from its narcissism and its rejection of suffering.
The Pope has said this in his brief remark, that truth needs beauty’s love as well as beauty;s loveliness, but that suffering is part of the picture. He points to the ‘caput cruentatum’, the crown of thorns, as the beautiful crown that Jesus wears, in contrast to the crowns of Herod and Pontius Pilate.
But making that image into an icon takes it out of its story, which tells us clearly that Jesus did not choose a crown of thorns, it was cruelly pressed upon him by Herod, who was a fake king (the Roman senate appointed him king of Israel). Herod was furious at Jesus’ insistence that the true king of Israel was God, who was a better provider for the people (days, rain, sun, life) than Herod. Herod the Great had been a huge builder, of aqueducts, public buildings, roads, dams, and he more than doubled the Temple in size. His son, Herod Antipas, put the crown of thorns on Jesus to signify Jesus’ powerlessness and to say that his words were empty. And he did it to be cruel, for Herod Antipas, like his father, was cruel.
We could also say that the crown of thorns, which in the Vatican has been turned into art, stands in contrast to the Pope’s own splendors, his finery of mitre, robes and ring, and to the elaborate construction of the Holy City, which is not the city of God to which Jesus pointed in his preaching.
The argument in the press is about this – what price has been paid for that art, that finery?
Truth and beauty, or verbum and ars as the Pope prefers to call them, always include sex, for the creation, the bodied, living, reproductive creation, is sexual by design. Nature is the touchstone of truth, and nature is beautiful, to our eyes, hearts, minds, and has God’s eternal blessing on it. Nature fills us with desire.
Vatican teaching has not understood this, and has so twisted the bodied lives of people as to have bruised human sexuality with thorns. Often, sexual urges are referred to as the thorn in the flesh. Mortification was the medieval response to them.
Now the world an outcry about all this, in the name of the suffering of the abused, but also in the name of truth about human life, and indeed in the name of beauty, which demands that injustice be named. What is beautiful about a city whose streets flow with sexual murk like raw sewage, even if its dome, its ‘caput’ is painted with rare art?
When the Vatican announces that it will not release information, that an important study into its practices will be kept private, that people who raise questions about injustice are disrespectful, in an era when there is every reason to suspect these things may be true, the Vatican behaves as Herod did.
Which brings us back to the old question of the legitimacy of the Vatican crown, and the argument is more about the present than the past.
This uneasiness will not be at all resolved by pomp and circumstance around a new man, or by moving the old man down the street.
Exposing corruption is following in the footsteps of Jesus, who wore his bloody crown and carried his cross, not for piety but for proclamation of what was really true and what was really beautiful.
You, Trisha, and your cohort of colleagues in Rome, are our best hope for truth in this process now.
Nancy, thank you for the eloquent, powerful and moving explanation. Your brilliant intellect shines through once again. I will not comment further because I want my blog readers to read your comment and not my words.
Thank you, Nancy for the wonderful illumination!
. . what an entertaining read – with all the shenanegans I’m expecting the anti-christ to reveal him/herself at some point. Roll on the next episode!
Thanks Alan — next episode is coming as soon as I can crank it out. I was at the Vatican all day today. First in the morning cover the Pope’s last Angelus to tens of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square, and then in the afternoon working on the Cardinal Sex Scandal of the Day. “Dirt of the Day” my AP wire colleague Fran D’Emilio was calling it. This time it is Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh who has allegedly had “inappropriate” relations with four priests. Oh dear, oh dear. I wonder how many of the 117 Cardinals who will be voting for the next Pope have had some sort of sexual relations. I imagine it must be quite a few. Honestly, I am not particularly judgmental if it is consenting adults, but if anyone touches a child, they deserve to be locked up as far as I am concerned. (That said, I don’t think any of the Cardinals have been directly involved in sexual abuse of minors, just covering it up– which is bad enough)
Two elections in Italy, one capturing attention and the other not. Both important. I am following the Vatican story closely in the regular media, you provide a great deal of deeper insight. I am inclined to believe the rumors. Power and wealth without transparency or accountability lead straight into misuse. The Catholic Church has an opportunity to choose a path that will lead to great relevance and importance yet it doesn’t look as if that is the path they will choose. Keep the info coming as well as you can with out unduly exhausting yourself.
Great stuff. L/D
Thank you Dad! I certainly hope the next Pope can come in and straighten things out at the Vatican, the situation is very discouraging there. I am not sure I have so much great insight, I am physically closer to the Vatican that most of my blog readers, but I don’t have much of a clue as to what is really going on behind those walls.
Wow, what a scene there in Rome and you right there to witness this piece of history. Oh, I’d give my eye teeth to be reporting on your beat right now. Your post really conveys some of the thoughts and names some of the major figures swirling around the election of the new pope that I hadn’t read elsewhere. The whole thing really does bring to mind back room dealing, intrigue and the Borgias. And that rooftop view that AP snared! Wow, that is what I’d call a front row seat. Thanks also for the link to Nancy Rockwell’s blog. I learned so much just from reading her comment. I have to say the first thing I thought of when I read the phrase ..”that truth needs beauty’s love as well as beauty’s loveliness, but that suffering is part of the picture.” wasn’t the papacy, but my mother. When I was a little girl, she used to curl my straight hair with a curling iron that was heated directly on the gas flame. Sometimes she’d accidentally scorch my scalp and in response to my cries would tell me “Per bellire, bisogna soffrire.” I too, am riveted to your posts and can hardly wait for the next one.
Linda, thank you for your comment and that lovely story about your mother curling your hair. You also taught me a new Italian phrase “per bellire, bisogna soffrire.”
I am so pleased you are enjoying my posts on the Vatican.
This just keeps getting better,Trisha. So good to have a bird’s eye view of the proceedings via your wonderful reporting. And judging by AP’s scaffolding, it is indeed bird’s eye.
We got a small glimpse on tonight’s news of the Italian presidential elections – there was the apparent frontrunner – some guy – looking drawn and worried and he hasn’t even been elected. The report then cut to a tanned, smiling, clearly smug Berlusconi, looking more and more like Ken Doll’s Great Grandpa every day. Of course the news then focused on the group of women protesters and the fact that they were topless. Oh boy – I was hoping for some insight into how the population perceives Berlusconi these days but no – we had to see the girls without their tops. (Sorry, Trish this has gone a little off topic).
Anyway, Zumba, furry tomatoes, no makeup and sweats in the supermarket. Go you Super Mamma!
Kathy — You are not going to believe this– those women who took off their tops while Berlusconi was voting got themselves accredited as AP photographers. They must have taken our logo off our our website and sent in accreditation. Boy was that a shock for all of us here. Now I probably won’t be let in anywhere to cover anything. They will think I am going to take my shirt off!!
NO WAY!!! How on earth can that happen? Fake accreditation off the website….imagine if that were to happen around President Obama. The lack of security is somewhat scary and it probably backfired as they got attention for all the wrong reasons.
I heard on the news this morning that Italys is headed for a hung parliament. I wonder how many people turned out to vote? All very interesting times (and exhausting for you no doubt).
The political situation is crazy. I had to interview a political analyst this morning before going to the Vatican, and he was using words like “disaster” and “chaos” to describe the political situation. Normally, I would do a post on the whole political situation, but I am so dead beat from all this Vatican stress. The news today was kind of cute. The Pope will still wear white after he officially resigns on Thursday, but he no longer will wear red shoes. He will still be His Holiness Benedict XVI, but now he will be Pope Emeritus.
This just gets crazier and crazier. I’m sticking to my guns that the Borgias were amateurs compared to these back-stabbing Vatican VIPs. I swear I won’t be surprised if I read the word “cantarella” in the papers one of these days.
Thanks so much for mentioning my blog! I truly appreciate it!
Awaiting your conclave coverage with baited breath!
Thank you Tiffany!!