Lorenzo Maria Pacini
The bully of the moment played his game and left before the funeral was over. Not even enough time to sing a requiem.
The bandwagon
"When one pope dies, another is made," says an ancient Roman proverb. Life has a beginning and an end for everyone, inexorably. And so it was that at the funeral of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis, the usual bandwagon of political figures from all walks of life paraded by.
Everyone was there: the Anglicans of the British crown, the Presbyterians of the American government, the self-styled Catholics of the Italian government, the Jews of the European Parliament, the high finance bankers, the coup plotters in green robes from Eastern Europe, the white-collar workers of globalism. All happy, in the front row, paying homage to their brother. Judging by the parade of participants, Bergoglio must have been a really good person...
If this is the yardstick, Jorge Mario Bergoglio's pontificate leaves behind mainly ruins, completing in the West a process of erosion of the faith and of the Christian proposal that has its roots in time, accelerated by the Second Vatican Council, which reduced the decadent Church of Rome to a rotting swamp. The most naive had opened their hearts, doors, and windows wide; Francis' reign has meant a further collapse of religious vocations, of participation in rituals-increasingly emptied of spiritual meaning-and of Christianity's incisiveness in society. It is a dramatic balance sheet, aggravated by practical mass atheism and the Islamization of Europe, phenomena in the face of which Catholicism appears to be a spectator, if not an accomplice.
The media orgy accompanying Bergoglio's death - prepared long in advance - is an almost unanimous symphony of praise, waves of rhetoric, and thunderous applause in a media-cultural-political climate with almost no dissenting voices. Clearly, personal suffering deserves respect; but in the face of history and the Petrine mission, Bergoglio's nearly twelve years of pontificate appear as a painful climb to Calvary. It is not surprising that the most enthusiastic among his eulogists are often non-believers, secularists, and anti-clericals. The impact has been felt more in the civil and political world than in the religious world. Curious? No, not really, because the "Bergoglio style" has contributed to further distorting Western Christianity, dealing it yet another blow.
There is nothing strange about this: "one of their own" has fallen, a figure aligned with the dominant thinking. A curious paradox, given that the Western mainstream is radically anti-Christian, materialistic, and atheistic. Pleasing the enemies of the faith should be cause for concern. He will certainly be remembered as the pope who offered protection, welcome, and support to LGBTQ+ movements, abortion, liberalism, mass vaccination, and globalism in its strongest and most extreme forms. When a pope dies, another is made, and the hope is always that his successor will be better than his predecessor.
To each his own... or maybe not
Beyond the theological and moral discussions, which many have already written about, it is interesting to note a not insignificant event: during the long hours of the funeral rites and worldwide celebrations for Bergoglio, U.S. President Donald Trump, who had traveled to Rome for the funeral, took advantage of the occasion to meet with his staff and no fewer than 42 cardinals, several politicians, and, most importantly, Zelensky.
The scene was as follows: Trump asked the monsignor accompanying him to arrange a dialogue with Zelensky, in the middle of St. Peter's Basilica, in front of one of the side altars. Macron also arrived, right on time, and had a third chair added. The three politicians clashed verbally and Trump had Macron removed, taking away his chair. Trump and Zelensky then began their "confession" under the eyes of the international press and at the most inopportune moment in history.
An iconic image, no doubt about it.
An image that says a lot about how things stand.
The American arrives in Rome and acts as if he were at home. He doesn't care much about the Pope, both because he has no moral ties to the Church of Rome and because Italy is still his colony, so he's in charge and does what he wants. Now, the more attentive might object and point out that the Vatican is not Italy, it is a state unto itself. All true. In fact, we should say that it is the most 'separate' state of all, because it is thanks to the Vatican that admiralty law still prevails in half the world, it is thanks to the Vatican that London's power is guaranteed, and it is still thanks to the Vatican that the Americans stayed in Italy in 1945 instead of going back to where they came from. But that is a topic for another article. What is clear is that America, it seems, has considerable freedom of maneuver even within the walls of the Sacred Palaces.
What has emerged clearly is that Trump does not care about protocols. His bravado, like a true American businessman, drives him to political pragmatism. Carpe diem, as the Latins would have said, and where Latin is still the official language, he seized the moment and applied the rule.
The American president held talks with the Ukrainian president, scribbling on the political geometry of recent months. Macron, as London's emissary and guarantor of EU interests, was not well received. A truly effective snub. Ursula Von der Leyen, present with her husband at the ceremony, had embraced Zelensky shortly before, chatting with him for a few minutes. The CIA's benzoylmethylcgonine enthusiast had even discarded his military green sweatshirt for the occasion, wearing a black jacket without too many stylistic pretensions.
Let's just think about the media power of that image. World leaders have seen that Trump literally does what he wants, wherever he goes, even in the dreaded Vatican. It will come as no surprise if his influence in the run-up to the conclave, considering the meetings he has had with the cardinals, will be very strong. This is an atomic bomb in terms of infowarfare.
All this just a few days before his trip to Moscow for the May 9 parade, while the hysterical EU tries to run for cover from the price increases caused by tariffs, which are sinking the Rehinmetall plants.
No, what happened is not an 'example of peace', as some have written, trying to paint the Vatican as a kind of neutral space where miracles happen; we saw political violence in perfect Yankee style, of the 'you shoot or I shoot' variety.
The bully of the moment played his game and left before the funeral was over. Not even enough time to sing a requiem.