St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis, and the Space in-Between
1. The Emptiness of St. Peter’s Square
“An Image That Will Enter into History.” This is what newspapers and commentators are saying about the image of Pope Francis giving the Urbi et Orbi in the terrible emptiness of St. Peter’s Square during the COVID-19 pandemic. The image of the lonely Pope Francis is powerful and shocking. The fatigue of Pope Francis walking up the stairs towards the basilica, the oppressive rainy sky above Rome, the architectural embrace of Bernini’s colonnades meeting the desolate emptiness of the square. All of it contributes to the moving experience of assisting and participating in Pope Francis’s meditation.
The emptiness in St. Peter’s Square felt sad in two ways. When something is “empty,” that means it contains nothing, or that it lacks its usual content. The square, emptied of the usual presence of believers during the Pope’s appearances, was a reminder that the world was in the middle of a crisis. But “empty” can also refer to words or gestures that lack meaning. On a symbolic level, then, the emptiness of St. Peter’s Square hurt even more. For believers and non-believers alike, the basilica and the colonnade are more than architectural sites. In principle, St. Peter’s Basilica and the colonnade are the manifestation of a meaningful order, a nomos that is imposed upon the discrete experiences of individuals. In a poetic and evocative passage of his book The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1969), Peter L. Berger writes: “Seen in the perspective of society, every nomos is an area of meaning carved out of a vast mass of meaninglessness, a small clearing of lucidity in a formless, dark, always ominous jungle.” I always thought that this privileged access to “meaning” made religious experience enviable. But I also know that for much of the “meaningful order” a religion or any other socially constructed nomos can provide, we, believers and non-believers alike, falter through it. The crucial point is that the sadness of the empty St. Peter’s Square resonated with me even more once I noticed the shocking contraposition between the meaningful order captured by the colonnade and the Church, and the resistance to that same meaning exercised by the emptiness of the square.
2. Parenthesis, in First Person Singular
(I do not believe in God. That doesn’t make me an atheist. That doesn’t make me an agnostic either. For years, I thought of myself as agnostic. I am not certain about that anymore. An agnostic is a person who claims neither belief nor disbelief in God. But I am certain of not believing in God. And yet, I would never identify with the certainties of atheists about the non-existence of God. I grew up in a Catholic family and attended Catholic schools for eight years. I believe that I never prayed by myself. I remember doing it once, but it must have been an exceptional circumstance. I do remember praying one more time when I was seventeen. After that, I never prayed anymore. As a child, I used to attend mass. I clearly recall that my favorite part of the mass was the sermon, especially those that challenged me to see the complexity and meaning of a scriptural passage and spoke to the experience of ordinary life. Today, it is still my favorite part of the mass. I have always struggled with the liturgy, the ceremonies of standing up, sitting down, and kneeling. I found the overtly pious tones of the old women in my village as they recited the Lord’s Prayer unbearable. I sensed a lack of spontaneity in their voices and a phony reverence towards something they never tried to understand. At some point, I stopped going to church. That was after I turned thirteen. After some years of deliberate disinterest, today, I never refuse to go to church if I am with my family or friends, even though I never developed the habit of going to church by myself. Nevertheless, when I occasionally find myself in a church, I still do pay careful attention to the sermon. The rites and the sacred art fascinate me. But for me, a religious experience is an intellectual experience. That will probably never make me a religious person. I lack the candor and innocence that, I believe, truthful religiosity requires. In the last two years, I started to think about religion more seriously. I admire people who have faith. I envy people who believe in something more than themselves.)
3. The Space in-Between Certainty and Chaos
The philosopher Jürgen Habermas provides a valuable definition of religion: “Every religion is originally a ‘conception of the world’ or a ‘comprehensive doctrine’ in the sense that it claims the authority to structure a form of life in its entirety.” Habermas stresses a crucial point: the most important function of religion, in principle, is nomization. Human beings are congenitally compelled to seek meaning, but individuals cannot find this meaning on their own. The possibility of finding meaning presupposes the existence of a community (religious or not) that is able to provide a “conception of the world,” and “to structure a form of life in its entirety.” This structure of life and meaningful conception of the world are important to human life because they protect against the dangers of death and pain, which are the ultimate dangers for the individual, and from the dangers of meaninglessness and chaos, which are the ultimate dangers for a society.
At first, I thought that Pope Francis’s words and visible presence in the great emptiness of St Peter’s Square would confirm Habermas’s characterization of religion as an authority that structures a form of life in its entirety. But, as soon as I start reflecting on Pope Francis’s appearance in the silence of St Peter’s Square, I realize that my attempt to superimpose Habermas’s definition to Pope Francis’s words was forced, an insufficient and gross generalization. Pope Francis’s meditation on Jesus’s calming of the storm in the Gospel of Mark stressed three things: the necessity of faith and hope; the need to rediscover what is valuable and what is superfluous; the importance of recognizing our human vulnerability and our need for solidarity. Francis’s religious meditation did not offer to “structure a form of life in its entirety.” Even though some glimmerings of truth and meaning can be found shining in the “thick darkness that has gathered over our squares,” as Pope Francis said, his meditation did not explain or find an overarching meaning in the great emptiness ahead of him. What one ultimately finds in Pope Francis’s words is a message of simplicity, faith, recognition of human fragility, and the need of rethinking what is truly valuable.
A pandemic forces us to confront one of the most important and essential religious problems: the problem of theodicy. For if there is a God, how do we justify evil? Because the story of the storm in the Gospel of Mark speaks to the problem of evil in the natural world, one might expect from Francis’s meditation an explanation able to give meaning to the chaos of a global pandemic, a reply that could place pain, suffering, and confusion within the overall understanding of life and human existence. But this is not what Pope Francis gave us in his meditation.
If I want to understand the words and images of the solitude of the Pope in St. Peter’s Square, I need to think more deeply. It is the Basilica itself, the colonnades, and certain of Pope Francis’s words that structure the world in its entirety and provide meaning in the face of meaninglessness. These things form a complex knot that stabilizes the order of society with an all-embracing, sacred universal order. But the emptiness of St. Peter’s Square threatened that order with the chaos that is the antithesis of all the religious meaning. The COVID-19 emergency represents a threat that brings with itself the danger of disorder and meaninglessness. It reminds us that all socially-constructed worlds are inherently precarious. In-between the great emptiness instituted by the disorder of a global pandemic and the great certainty manifested by the colonnades and the Church, there is a human being, Francis, with his faith. Even religion, with its ability to provide a comprehensive understanding of life, is challenged by the threat of meaninglessness. Pope Francis’s words of hope, his call to faith and to the teaching of Jesus, inhabits a space in-between the absolute certainty of the Church, with its unmovable columns, and the absolute chaos of the emptiness of the square. That space in-between certainty and chaos is the place of the faith.
Donato Loia is a Doctoral Candidate in Art History at the University of Texas.
