The Pope's window to the world
by ANGELO SCELZO
Translated from
January 10, 2009
The rhythm of transformation in the new media is accelerating. Cyberspace continues to open new frontiers even as it discards anything that does not point to the future...
And yet, in the first days of this new year, the 'means of communication' that has been most reported on [in both old and new media] has nothing to do with new information technologies.
It is something that has been around a while and has seen much history - the signs of weathering are evident to all.
It is a window on the world, a literal window, that every week captures media attention and strikes a completely different note from the media concert playing the same old stale and predictable scores
[In the parlance of IT, one might perhaps call it Window 1.0, the prototype as well as the 'ne plus ultra' of communication windows!]
It is the Pope's third-floor study window in the Apostolic Palace, the window of the Pope's Angelus homilies and messages.
When, every Sunday and major religious feast day, it opens on St. Peter's Square, never take the occasion for granted.
Especially, not with Benedict XVI, who has continued to show, since the first Angelus of this new year, that this rather extraordinary pulpit - which opens equally to the piazza and to the world
urbi et orbi, in fact, as Pope's messages go] - will never lack for news, and even surprises.
The Holy Father started 2010 by warning against 'improbable prognostications' and even of 'economic forecasts, as important as they may be' to reiterate that man has to look elsewhere for true hope.
To blot out the 'truth' that can come from some crystal ball or ponderous expert analysis goes against the grain of New Year practices - and so those words from the window were not likely to fall on deaf ears.
And as if to carry on the theme, from one Angelus to the next, Pope Benedict then cites the example of the Magi - those wise men who, for all their expertise in reading the stars as well as their familiarity with the history of peoples, still needed to stop and ask instructions from learned Jews on how best to get to where they would find the newborn 'king of the Jews'.
And from the Pope's window, the message was that true wisdom is intelligence that is open to faith.
Theologians may make dissertations over the separation between faith and culture. Nonetheless, in some way, the Pope's window is also an open book to the world, because in the form of prayer and reflection, the Pope's weekly 'chat' with the faithful is also a chronicle of our day, whose pages are not limited to a religious or ecclesiastical nature.
Among the various forms of communication used by modern Popes, the Angelus is at the same time the most solemn and the most familiar, and its central physical element, the window, has become in some way, the most famous image of the Popes communicating with the faithful and with the rest of the world.
From that opening that directly lies above the majestic embrace of Bernini's colonnade, even silence has spoken, and most sublimely: when John Paul II, a month before he died, tried unsuccessfully to say something to the crowd after he had returned from what would be his last hospitalization.
Somewhat a hearth
[an image that recalls Franklin Roosevelt's 'fireside chats'], somewhat a book on world events, the Angelus window always represents the perspective of hope for all mankind.
From the Pope's window, mankind is not a blurred panorama. The faces of men are like an infinite plurality of the one Face of Christ.
Therefore, the view from that window goes far beyond physical space and geography - the Pope's vision is acute, made more so by profundity of spirit.
From that window, the Pope looks across the globe - and this is the perspective that opens not only to those who may find themselves one day in St. Peter's Square looking up to that window, but to all men who, in so many public squares around the world, find it difficult to look upwards at all. Perhaps because they are discouraged in looking for a window that they have been unable to find.
I have been hoping that someone would write a substantial essay on "the Pope's window" - though someone may well have done so already, in all the years I wasn't following papal news at all outside of what I saw on TV or in the newspapers.
The above is not a bad start and is an excellent initiative, but it barely skims the possibilities... BTW, I wasted some time just now unsuccessfully trying to find out online how the practice of the Pope's public Angelus from the window started.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2010 12:46]