Pope Francis soldiers on with his mission to reform the Vatican Curia

Rome has started to buzz again, as residents of the Eternal City eagerly look for ways to return to some semblance of life as it was before the coronavirus caused it to shut down for nearly three months.

Jun 20, 2020

By Robert Mickens
Rome has started to buzz again, as residents of the Eternal City eagerly look for ways to return to some semblance of life as it was before the coronavirus caused it to shut down for nearly three months.

Almost all stores and shops were able to resume business on May 18 and just a couple of weeks later, on June 3 to be exact, people could start travelling to other regions of the peninsula. All the countries in the European Union also opened their borders.

Restaurants and cafes in the Italian capital, especially those with outdoor seating, are showing encouraging signs of life again.

And the traffic is back, as the Urb’s notoriously aggressive motorists try to reclaim the city’s potholed streets from a surprisingly significant chunk of the population that recently discovered how to ride a bicycle.

But the tourists, whose presence and pocketbooks have become increasing essential to the local economy, are still few and far between. So few, in fact, that Rome seems like a “normal” city right now.

It’s actually quite nice to have the town all to ourselves again, something we’ve not experienced since the last century when there was still something called “low season” for tourism.

That ended with the Great Jubilee of 2000 when the Vatican and the City of Rome teamed up to create a tourism infrastructure with a very specific goal – ensure that there will always be hordes of visitors all year round.

A Vatican that’s addicted to tourism
Even during the once sacrosanct summer holiday period of Ferragosto, when everything used to be closed during the entire month of August, the city now plays host to lots of tourists.

If much of Rome has become over-reliant on the tourist industry, the Vatican has  become positively addicted to it.

And it shows right now.

Via della Conciliazione, the long and wide (mostly) pedestrian avenue leading from the Tiber River to St. Peter’s Square, is usually so crowded with people that it’s almost impossible to navigate with a bike.

But these days you could easily land a Boeing-747 on its empty stretch.

The square itself remains pretty much deserted. At certain hours of the day, mostly nuns and priests, their faces covered with surgical masks, can be seen traversing its cobblestoned expanse.

Probably they are either coming from or going to work in the Roman Curia or some other place in Vatican City.

Pope World on the Tiber
There are also several police cars parked in the square and at its outer edges. The cops have been keeping watch here since the lockdown and the re-opening, checking the few stragglers that have, so far, made their way back to “Pope World on the Tiber”.

And, ironically, that’s exactly what the Vatican feels like right now – a Disneylike theme park that’s been closed for the season. There are no crowds. There are no tourists.

It is a sad spectacle. And conveys a worrying message. This has long been seen as the centre of Catholicism. Or as a friend once remarked with irreverent sarcasm: “It’s the dead centre of the Church, emphasis on dead.”

The mobs of tourists and “pilgrims” that usually fill St Peter’s Square and clog up its surrounding streets served to hide how dead – and irrelevant – the Vatican is already and is becoming more still.

But now that they are not here, it’s a lot easier to spot the characters in this clerical theme park – Pope World’s alternatives to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Cinderella, Tinker Bell and all the rest…

A lot of them are cardinals, mostly old and doddery.

There’s one! Famous for posing in outlandish ecclesiastical costumes from a bygone era, he makes his way down Borgo Pio. He’s completely covered in black – a long cassock, wide-brimmed fedora and black leather gloves.

With his anti-coronavirus mask drawn up to the frames of his spectacles, he looks as if he’s wearing a burka. Indeed, wafting from a coffee shop in the distance one can hear the sounds of A Whole New World, the hit song from the Disney film Aladdin…

Time for true reform
Meanwhile, in this bizarre Vatican world, Pope Francis tries his best to carry on with his mission to re-energize and “convert” his fellow Catholics to Gospelbased Christianity; re-unite the separated Churches in full communion; and bring together the entire world in an urgent, fraternal project to save our planet – our common home.

“Praise be to you, Lord!”

The coronavirus lockdown brought the Roman Curia to a halt. It deprived the Holy See of much needed revenue from its tourist trade, especially through the Vatican Museums. And it grounded a pope who usually travels abroad four or five times a year. Christianity did not collapse. And the world did not stop turning.

But the structure and functioning of Rome-based, Euro-centric Catholicism has never looked more anachronistic. The post-Constantinian Church continues to implode.

And Pope Francis, now 83, should probably shelve any more foreign trips and focus entirely on his long, drawn-out plan to truly reform the Church’s bureaucratic headquarters, the Roman Curia. The lockdown has shown that now’s the time. --LCI (https://international.la-croix.com)

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