The pope of pop -
from street art to 'street theology'
August 9, 2017
For a few weeks now, the souvenir kiosks in and around Saint Peter’s Square have been selling T-shirts with Francis dressed as Superpope.
The image is not new. It appeared in 2014 on a wall on Via Plauto, a short walk from the Vatican, and was removed a few hours later. But it brought fame to its creator, Mauro Pallotta, 45, who goes by the name Maupal. And the image, of course, went viral on the Web.
Last October, Maupal once again depicted the pope on a new mural, on Vicolo del Campanile, this time playing tic-tac-toe and drawing peace symbols instead of O’s, with a Swiss Guard acting as his lookout. This new drawing was also erased in a matter of hours, but it too has gone down in history.
So when an apparel company got the idea to reproduce the first of the two drawings on a T-shirt, no one at the Vatican objected. On the contrary, Monsignor Dario Viganò, prefect of the newly created secretariat for communication and one of the pope’s closest confidants, expressed his full approval. Which, wonder of wonders, coincided with that of the artist, according to whom Pope Francis is
“a man who with his simplicity and great openness toward the real needs of the people instills hope on a par with a Superhero.”
After getting the copyright from Maupal, the company successfully completed the steps for the necessary Vatican authorizations, with a formal contract undersigned by the Secretariat of State. In exchange for the license to commercialize the image of Francis as “Superpope,” the Holy See gets 9 percent of the T-shirt sales for Peter’s Pence, the fund coming from direct contributions from the faithful around the world [usually through special annual collections at Sunday Mass specifically for the fund].
None of which is a surprise so far with a pope like Jorge Mario Bergoglio who has perfect symbiosis with the mechanisms of media and publicity.
But a book published last year – whose cover design showing the pope on a skateboard is decidedly a take-off on street art – raises serious questions about the appropriateness of the reigning pope's happy-go-lucky adherence to the current canons of communication. The book is entitled '
Teologia di Strada. La scritianizzazione o Gran Fuga della realta della Chiesa post-moderna dal Concilio Vaticano II a Papa Francesco' (Theology of the street: The de-Christianization or Great Escape from reality of the post-modern Church from the Second Vatican Council to Pope Francis)
The author, Enrico Maria Radaelli, a disciple of the Swiss philosopher Romano Amerio, is one of the most sophisticated voices of
theological criticism of the tendencies of the Catholic Church in the decades that followed the Second Vatican Council.
For him, the “street theology” personified by Bergoglio and his magisterium is to classical theology as the destined-to-
disappear street art of a Kendridge or a Basquiat – or why not, of a Maupal – is to the immortal art of a Giotto or
a Michelangelo. [The use of the word 'street' as an adjective is pejorative here as in 'streetwalker', to mean something cheap and vulgar.]