Leone XIV, what a mystery the new Pope!

This entry is posted on number 21 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until May 20, 2025

Waiting to return to the apartment in Santa Marta, now almost empty of cardinal voters, a sad winter near the Tiber and I look at the world from the bottom of via della Conciliazione. Operation not of the simplest, since for this Sunday, 11 Maythe Jubilee of the musical bands And the horrible rationalist axis is all a riot of wind and percussion that perform the whatever: hymns, religious songs, dance pieces, soundtracks and those that I suppose to be the great workhorses of a band worthy of the name. Majorette pieces alternating with sprazzi di Morricone and Piazzolla, until (still) timeless “We want God”.

A clang that makes veil to the activity of these days which, as the ancient Curia wisdom teaches, is the very discreet and meticulous one of the study: Who is Robert Francis Prevost? What type is, what does Leone XIV think (also considered non -debutant facial mimicry)?

Obviously there is a more opaque aspect, towards which it is useless to do respectors: spiritual, scientific, political, economic, cultural, university, any power acts like a magnet on men who, attracted by its holder and to be noticed (and then choose), do everything to prevent its tastes and support its desires, for which it is important that they know and know. But there is also, in all this, a simply anthropological component: When a new being appears on the scene, you want to know. If it is curious. Need that, in an anxious climate e
Axogenic like ours, and with a number never seen in people who live in various reasons and recycling news, is even more imperforced and paroxysmal.

And therefore they have already started, if not beautiful that concluded, the genealogical investigations on the Prevost family (-martínez)the different ethnic and cultural ancestry, and the hooks to the different national and village traditions, which have already cheerfully started the claim of their participation shares of the new pontificate.

The reconstruction of the curriculum of studies complete with attended research centers, acquired titles and in -depth subjects and topics: The new Pope is a mathematician, but also a philosopher and canonist. Sporting interests between Football and tennis They are no longer a mystery neither in personal results nor in fans’ sides. And then the dear placescousins ​​and pro-cousins ​​that flock to the four corners of the planet, and images and videos with a more or less recent past, up to Instagram post meticulously dedicated to the facial mimic and the prossemic of the newly taught, complete with indications to decrypt moods and thoughts.

A situation, this of the “days of study”, which can boast noble ascertains and a bibliography
very authoritative, From Machiavelli to Baldassarre Castiglionefrom the moralists of Grand Siècle to Paul Ekman, but who recalls me The “first” return to the home of Jesus of Nazareth During the years of his public mission (Mt 13, 55-58). Genealogical-comfort-cultural retrospective investigations also started against him too: “Isn’t the son of the carpenter’s son? And his mother, isn’t it called Maria? And his brothers, Giacomo, Giuseppe, Simone and Judah? And their sisters are not all of us? ».

Nothing illegal, for heaven’s sake, or useless, but an attitude that the interested party revealed in his enormous danger: that of try to harness the new in the well -knownthe prodigious in the registry, what was surprised – the fascinating show of “all these things” that Jesus made – as he had already given himself has already won in the text.

In a word, without granting the spirit the possibility of acting, redesigning things. Until the conclusion that it is one of the most definitive and dramatic of the whole New Testament: “And there, due to their disbelief, he did not have many wonders”. Better to let him go clearly, therefore, the good lionadmitting that, at the moment, we do not know much (there is nothing shameful in not knowing) and that it will be much more compelling to follow him in the novelty that preceding him with that little collected on his account.

Don Giacomo Cardinali
From 2 April 2025 Vice Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, where he has been working since 2015. He has numerous monographs, scientific articles and participations in international conferences.

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