The Pope of the Rain: The Extraordinary Solitude in the Media
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
3. The Context
4. Fractures
5. Time, a Radical Disruption
6. A Gallery of Images
6.1. Bergamo, Night of 18 March 2020
6.2. Liberation Day, Rome, 25 April 2020
6.3. Terrazza Martini, Milan, 1 May 2020
6.4. New Year’s Concert, Vienna, 1 January 2021
6.5. President Joe Biden Swearing in Ceremony, Inauguration Day, Washington, 20 January 2021
6.6. Opera Theatre, Rome, 9 April 2021
7. The Pope of the Rain
7.1. Rome, Saint Peter’s Square, 27 March 2020
Francis standing alone, embodying in a plastic way the essence of the “pontiff” role, that of being the bridge between the earth, which needs answers, and the sky, to whom questions are posed.
An exhausted humankind but leaning on God has experienced this extraordinary event broadcast worldwide by Vatican Media. In an empty Saint Peter’s Square, gleaming in the rain, in a silence that echoed millions of prayers and a universal need for hope.
(Francis in an) empty square but followed by Catholics from all over the world. Francis’ meditation has flew over and overwhelmed the empty, thousand-year-old spaces of a city whose people are entirely locked up in their homes, which are transformed into domestic churches by prayer.
7.2. Rome, Via del Corso, 15 March 2020
And he went on, adding details:Brothers and sisters, Christendom no longer exists! Today we are no longer the only ones who create culture, nor are we in the forefront or those most listened to.
We are no longer living in a Christian world, because faith—especially in Europe, but also in a large part of the West—is no longer an evident presupposition of social life: indeed, faith is often rejected, derided, marginalized and ridiculed. (…) There are countries where churches with an ancient foundation exist but are experiencing the progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God’.
We need to initiate processes and not just occupy spaces. (…) It is no longer merely a question of ‘using’ instruments of communication, but of living in a highly digitalized culture. In an approach to reality that privileges images over listening and reading.
8. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | I refer to the “everything will be fine” of the early days, expressed in an immaterial way (sound) and in a joyful tone (singing and music). People were singing on balconies, that is, from a place where one can be visible without breaking the restriction posed to social encounters in the collective space (streets, squares, etc.). The same message, as we will see, was contained in the passage from the Gospel commented on by Pope Francis in the ritual of 27 March. |
2 | These images were “stolen”, recorded by chance when they were intended to remain secret. This feature revealed their radical relevance even more: they made clear that the world and its objects were certainly different from the way they appeared until a moment before. They produced a radical fracture in the epoch of the natural attitude and an immediate emergence of “fundamental anxiety”, precisely because they directly and openly confronted the origin of this epoch, always present but usually removed: “I know that I shall die and I fear to die” (Schutz 1962, p. 228). |
3 | A similar solution was adopted in various TV programmes, in which the presence of the audience in the studio was recalled through silhouettes of people sitting in the spaces usually dedicated to them. The fact that they depicted images of people who could not be there (for example, the president of the republic, the German chancellor, etc.) provided those cardboard silhouettes with the function of being recognisable as pure signs, referring to a desired presence, not as surreptitious means to hide the real absence, and indeed served as a reminder. |
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Guizzardi, G. The Pope of the Rain: The Extraordinary Solitude in the Media. Religions 2024, 15, 942. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15080942
Guizzardi G. The Pope of the Rain: The Extraordinary Solitude in the Media. Religions. 2024; 15(8):942. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15080942
Chicago/Turabian StyleGuizzardi, Gustavo. 2024. "The Pope of the Rain: The Extraordinary Solitude in the Media" Religions 15, no. 8: 942. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15080942
APA StyleGuizzardi, G. (2024). The Pope of the Rain: The Extraordinary Solitude in the Media. Religions, 15(8), 942. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15080942