I’d been wondering when the media would get their teeth into Pope Francis.
The initial response to the election of Cardinal Bergoglio
was positive – mainly because his name was not Ratzinger.
But it was
inevitable (because the pope is a Catholic) that the honeymoon wouldn’t
last long. The Dirty War thing having failed to stick, a lacuna remained
to be filled.
Ah! Pope Francis is “obsessed” with the devil.
So asserted innumerable media reports following an incident in St
Peter’s Square in Rome last Sunday afternoon.
The AP report in this
newspaper stated that the pope “may” have performed an exorcism on a
sick man: “The man heaved deeply a half-dozen times, convulsed and
shook, and then slumped in his wheelchair as the pontiff prayed over
him.”
“Fuelling the speculation,” we were told, was
Pope Francis’s “well-known obsession with the devil – a frequent subject
of his homilies.” A report in the
Sun
employed similar phrases: “The pontiff then grips the top of
the subject’s head firmly and is seen pushing him down into his
wheelchair. As this is happening Francis recites an intense prayer, and
the boy’s mouth drops wide open and he exhales sharply. Francis’s usual
smile then returns and he continues with the traditional and more gentle
Sunday greetings for sick or disabled visitors to St Peter’s.”
Excitement and expectation
As this episode was taking place, I was standing 20 yards away on the steps of St Peter’s Basilica. I saw no exorcism, because nothing of the kind occurred. My girlfriend had been videoing the pope’s progress through the crowd. In her recording, the soon-to-be alleged beneficiary of the exorcism can be seen in the minutes beforehand, eagerly watching the pope’s progress along the line of disabled pilgrims. If asked whether I thought the young man was possessed by anything, I would hazard excitement and expectation.
The “exorcism” lasted 10 seconds. When Pope
Francis arrived, he immediately rested his left hand on the young man’s
head and spoke with a priest standing behind the wheelchair.
The young
man kissed the pope’s ring, suggesting that the devil was not in total
control.
The priest, Fr Juan Rivas, later wrote about the episode on his Facebook
page, saying that there had been no exorcism.
“Since no one heard what
he said,” Fr Rivas stated, “including me who was right there, you can
say he did a prayer for liberation but nothing more.”
(A prayer for
liberation is a standard prayer to expel evil spirits, which can include
jealousy, fear, anger and lust.)
The pope behaved no differently while with the young
man than he had with the two dozen other disabled people to whom he
spoke that afternoon. After eight or nine seconds, he placed his right
hand on the man’s head and prayed for a further 10 seconds.
The young
man did not “heave”, “shake” or “slump”. He sat back in his wheelchair,
possibly overcome by emotion, as frequently happens when people meet a
pope. He may have had some kind of brief seizure, although it is clear
in the final instants of the encounter that he was in no way distressed
or agitated.
When the pope took his hands away, the man could be seen
surveying Francis with the same curious intensity as 20 seconds before.
One especially intriguing aspect of the episode
is the pseudo-journalistic language and devices employed to give legs
to a limbless “story”.
We were told that the “TV station of the bishops’
conference” had “surveyed” exorcists, who “agreed” that the pope
“either performed an exorcism or a prayer to free the man from the
devil”.
By the time the director of TV2000, the television of the
Italian bishops’ conference, went public next day, the world’s media had
moved on.
“I don’t want to attribute to [the pope] a gesture that he
didn’t intend to perform,” said the director of the station, Dino Boffo.
Media people generally tend to become
incandescent at suggestions that they might be in some business other
than relaying “the news”.
Still, the “news” from St Peter’s Square at
the weekend would have had to do not with the devil but the enormous
celebration of the Christian faith that took place there, unreported by
any Irish media outlet.
On both Saturday and Sunday, 200,000 people
turned up to see and listen to Pope Francis.
I had the honour to be one
of two people chosen to give a public witness before the pope, who
afterwards spoke in the warmest terms to the people, who listened with
deep attention.
Catholics may buy newspapers, but this, it
seems, does not entitle them to read about things that matter to them.
Instead, they must endure an – at best – persistent condescending
crypto-satire that seeks to demean and trivialise their faith while
leeching off the majesty of their faith as a source of material.
Whatever about post-Christian, we are certainly living in a
post-journalism age.