Monday, March 05, 2012

Hermine Speier: A woman in the Vatican

The first woman employed by the Vatican, was Hermine Speier, a Jew. 

She was put in charge of the photographic archive of the Vatican Museums by Pius XI, in 1934. 

Pius XI had in fact already brought a woman to the Vatican, when he was elected Pope – his housekeeper, Teodolinda Banfi. 

“But a housekeeper is one thing, a professional occupying an official role is quite another,” 

Aldo Maria Valli stressed in his book Piccolo mondo vaticano - La vita quotidiana nella città del Papa (The small world of the Vatican City State – Daily Life in the Pope’s city), published by Laterza (198 pages, Price: 16 Euro).

The story of the first woman to be employed in the popes’ city – and buried in the Vatican’s Teutonic Cemetery – is just one of the many interesting facts and stories mentioned in Valli’s latest work. 

Valli, a Vatican television correspondent who has also had success as a writer.  

Piccolo mondo vaticano belongs to the lucky and always topical current that tries to respond to the questions that that have always surrounded the Vatican, the city state that it home to the leader of the world’s one billion Catholics and the small surrounding world, characterised by activities, customs, traditions, commitments and mysteries.

Valli takes his reader by the hand and accompanies them to the Vatican cash point which responds in Latin, to the Pope’s garage, to the Vatican pharmacy and supermarket. 

The author also penetrates the world of Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence and takes us on a trip to the Vatican Observatory.

Valli reconstructs some difficult cases in recent Vatican history, including: the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of an employee who worked in the Vatican City and the murder of Alois Estermann, commander of the Pontifical Swiss Guard and his wife Gladys who were killed by Lance Corporal Cedric Tornay, who later committed suicide. 

Valli discusses the doubts the lance corporal’s family had with regard to the murder-suicide version of events and on the reasons for the murder. 

He concludes that in any case, “none of the hypotheses had been confirmed through concrete evidence.”