On Saturday, posters appeared around Rome featuring a stern-looking Pope Francis and asking “Where’s your mercy?” The unsigned images referred to the “decapitation” of the Knights of Malta and other actions Francis has taken against groups and individuals perceived as conservative.
“Ah Francis, you’ve taken over congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals… but where’s your mercy?” it reads.
All around the Vatican in Rome, but also in several other venues, many of the posters were quickly removed or covered by another, smaller one that said they were “Illegal Postings,” but by then the impression had already been made.
Though there’s no logo on the image, nor any clue as to who might be behind them, the content of the poster makes it clear that they come from conservative, if not traditionalist, quarters within the Catholic Church, many of whom feel ostracized, ignored and even attacked by the more progressive Argentine pontiff.
The poster uses Romanesco, the dialect of Italian native to the city of Rome, which may suggest that whoever’s behind it is local.
Full story at Crux.
some italian blogsites feel that the posters were in the tradition of ‘pasquino’ commmentary the 3-d posting statue near piazza navona on which natives could leave their comments to express the feelings of the roman people(they would write a statement on a poster and place it around paquino’s neck, as hit- and= run free speech the locals still use romanesco but prefer to call their dialect ‘romanaccio’. romanaccio is used also to signal the expression of humorous or satirical comments like our tradition of political cartoons or stand-up comic patter.
drewelow, I can hardly read your comment! Yet, it contained some good information, that others might like to read! Can you possibly write in a normal way? Thanks!
you’re right, linda. this one was trying to compress too m uch into single sentences….plus, some punctuation didn’t go in where it should have. so here’s a decompression. pasquino is an old, defaced statue in a street behind piazza navona. it has no arms. about 200 years ago the romans felt they couldn’t speak freely without losing limb or livelihood(it was typical across europe under royals, big or local) so notes slung around pasquino’s neck were written as a way of not just expressing personal opinion, but often majority opinion. in one way it helped organize opinion. at least it allowed romans…
to feel that they had some way to talk to the bosses without losing their heads. when cervantes wrote don quixote, he wrote a lengthy preeface dedicated to the king, a standard practice among book writers to state that ‘any similarity to actual persons or situations is only accidental”. shakespeare ,similarily, was very cautious about getting too over with the hot political and religious issues of the throne.
by putting the placard words around pasquino, it gave the effect that he was making the comment. in this way, it was like a political cartoon where often an established ‘character’ face makes statements… or like the ‘anonymous’ leering mask that speaks now then on the internet. the tradition also has ‘pasquino’ speaking romanaccio, the local dialect of italian, as a way to say ‘ here’s what us everyday romans think’ pasquino sometimes makes his comment in a satirical, joking way to take the edge off off and avoid defamation, legally. and perhaps to say ‘i’m not trying to do harm’
the vatican was quick to condemn it, with fr spadaro saying it was written in ‘faux’ romanesco(the literary way to refer to romanaccio) as a way of saying that it did not come from or express the people…..but maybe it did. they seemed extra sensitive to it, especially since the world press picked up on, so they tried to spin it right away. but they really can’t be sure. one more level of meaning to mention….by resorting to pasquino to talk to the holy father, they are implying that there is a dictatorship that will brook no questioning. as a form of theatre, it does have a mocking effect, which is…
indeed negative. but effective. it will be blamed on the ‘dubia cardinals’ and the very rigid people. there might be a lashing out at the ;right’ as payback, from what has been seen before(the italian fbi was asked to investigate it and street cameras are being reviewed. the posters apparently covered all of rome, placed on usual public announcement poster stands and walls. i wrote another, better version of this that my email funtion dissolved, so i wrote a hasty latenight short form to comment which was what was posted.