Patriarch of Venice | Venice: I am not making this up

Patriarchal postscript

March 29, 2012 8 Comments

Zwingle’s Eighth Law states “The bigger your memorial, the less people remember who you were.” A wander around Westminster Abbey shines a blinding light on that truth. A black marble slab for Charles Dickens, a white marble meringue for James Cornewall.

In case anyone was wondering if there might be any memorials to the three patriarchs of Venice who became pope, the answer is yes. But you might not notice them, and if you did, you might not quite grasp who they were. Especially if the inscription is in Latin (grrr).

Trivia alert: Venetians refer to popes, especially the three that touched Venice, by their civilian last names, not their formal papal names. Also, the word for “pope” in Italian is papa (PAH-pah.) The nickname for your daddy is the same word, pronounced pah-PAH. If you mix them up, people will think the pope is your father.

Pope Pius X, “Papa Sarto,” was deeply moved on leaving Venice to go to Rome for the conclave of cardinals meeting to elect the successor to Pope Leo XIII. The throng which came to see him off at the station was exhibiting what we’d call intense separation anxiety. He reassured them by promising that he would return, whether alive or dead. Yes, he said those words. He was elected pope, and though he lived another 11 years, he never made it back. He died in 1914.

In 1959, Pope John XXIII (just coming up in our chronicle) — who knew of this unfulfilled promise — arranged for Sarto’s casket to be disinterred, organized a special train which left, in those days, from a station within the Vatican, and sent him back to Venice. The body lay in state in the basilica of San Marco for a month, then was returned by special train to the Vatican. Promise kept.

Footnote: Lino remembers the day the train arrived, not because he was present, but because all the employees of the Aeronavali, which maintained and repaired airplanes at Nicelli airport on the Lido, were taken in a bus to see where the new Marco Polo airport was going to be built on the mainland. The sacred and the profane just keep on running into each other.

Of the three papal memorials here, that of Saint Pius X is the most impressive by weight, but the least impressive by location: at the head of the Ponte della Liberta’ by Piazzale Roma, next to the Agip gas station. Lino says it’s because he’s there to guard the gate to the city. There may well be more to it than that, but I haven’t taken the time to root it out. That could be a project for my old age.

IMG_4662 pat — This is a crucial node in your arrival by car. If you want to park, you're now looking for the garage. If you're taking a ship, or the ferry to the Lido, you'll be taking the off-ramp at the bottom of the picture. If you're at the gas station, you'll be staring at the price on the pump with something like terror. If it's night, the light over the monument will never stand out in the intermittent illumination from the street lamps. Speaking of illumination, sorry I took this in the morning -- I didn't realize I'd be facing due east.

IMG_4655 pat — The inscription reads: "He returned (reference to his vow) with the halo of the saints. Alleluia!" And beneath the bust, "O holy father, bless Venice." I'd like to know if anyone ever puts money in the slot. It may be the most challenging place for a hundred miles to make a contribution. More people stop at memorials on mountaintops than stop at this one. The dates flanking his head (April 2, 1959 - May 10, 1959) refer to the period of his return visit. He was canonized in 1954, so his sainthood was official.

Pope John XXIII, Papa Roncalli, or “The Good Pope,” was known as a saint by anyone who ever met him, at least here in Venice. The beatification details that made it official were just extra.

Lino had two encounters with him. One was by surprise, crossing the patriarch’s path as he left the basilica of the Salute. Lino was strolling with his girlfriend, and Roncalli stopped to say hello. “Are you two engaged?” he asked in a friendly, if generic, way. “Yes, Your Eminence” — Lino repeats this in a tiny abashed voice. “Love each other,” he said, patting each of them on the cheek. Evidently his charisma marked this little event in a powerful way, because on paper it looks like nothing.

The second encounter was at the airport, where Lino worked as an airplane mechanic. Patriarch Roncalli came to celebrate mass there for the workers, and he was lacking an altarboy to assist him. Lino volunteered.

My favorite bit of Roncalli lore is the nickname the gondoliers gave him: “Nane Schedina,” or Jack the Lottery Ticket. When he chose the name John XXIII, to the wags at the Molo stazio the Roman numerals looked like the pattern of the numbers on a lottery ticket.

If you needed any further evidence of his qualities as a patriarch/pope/human being, the nickname says it all. Gondoliers bestow them spontaneously, and only when they really want to. In fact, if there is any category which comes equipped with a built-in automatic crap detector, as Hemingway put it, it would be the gondoliers. The fact that Roncalli would sometimes walk over to the Molo to say hello, and even sometimes take them up on their offer of going to get a glass of wine at the nearby bar, obviously had something to do with their feeling for him. He’d play cards with the staff in the evening, too. Not with the majordomo, with the cook and the cleaning ladies.

He’s the only patriarch of the three that has two memorials. That doesn’t earn him any bonus points, I merely mention it.

IMG_4667 pat — This bust of Pope John XXIII faces the side entrance to the basilica of San Marco. It looks well-lit from this angle, but if you see it straight on it's always in a sort of muddy little area of wall that makes it hard to distinguish. Not to mention makes it almost impossible to read the fulsome Latin inscription over it. I think that's pretty funny, considering how he moved the liturgy from Latin to the vernacular so it could be understood by everybody. I'd be willing to bet that this inscription really annoys him. If saints can get annoyed.

IMG_4669 pat — I was thinking of getting a translation of the encomium above him, but I resisted, on principle. Anyway, the inscription doesn't add anything you can't get just by looking at his face.

Pope John Paul I, “Papa Luciani,” was smaller and, it turns out, more frail than his two patriarchal predecessors. But Venetians loved him, and not just because he came from the mountains just up the road. In his mere 33 days on the throne of St. Peter he earned the sobriquet “The Smiling Pope.” Venetians already knew that.

So far, no bust of him has been made, or if so, placed anywhere a human can see it. But he is remains an extremely tough act to follow, as his successors have amply demonstrated.

IMG_4672 pat — The patriarch's palace faces the Piazzetta dei Leoncini, joined to the basilica of San Marco. The two memorial plaques are between the two windows on the right and left of the entrance.

IMG_4673 pat 550 — "In this patriarchal seat Cardinal Albino Luciani lived at the head of his flock in goodness and hard-working humility from 1970 to 1978 when elected Pope John Paul I for thirty-three days as father and universal master opened the way to a new hope."

IMG_4675 pat 550 — "In this patriarchal seat in the spirit of the mission of Venice illustrated by Saints Lorenzo Giustiniani and Pius X Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli shepherd and beloved father from 1953 to 1958 in fruitful thoughtfulness prepared the ecumenical vastness and innovatory ferment of his glorious pontificate."

IMG_4678 pat — Mons. Francesco Moraglia's coat of arms, now in place over the entrance to the patriarch's palace. Its symbolism, from top to bottom, is: The patriarchal hat, the lion of San Marco, a star representing the Virgin Mary, its eight points denoting the eight Beatitudes, a battlement (a pun on his name -- "muraglia" means wall), and the sea with an anchor, freely borrowed/interpreted from the crest of Pius X. The motto reads "With Mary mother of Jesus," a phrase which among other things, was used by Pope John XXIII on presenting to the Curia the Apostolic Constitution. Tempting fate?

IMG_4679 pat — To descend, as I enjoy doing, from the sublime to the quotidian, on Tuesday morning a barge was called to the service entrance of the basilica to take away a rack of vestments. I don't know if they were used at the big investiture ceremony two days earlier, or are being sent to the drycleaner to be ready for Palm Sunday and/or Easter. But off they go.

Venetian Events

The Patriarch clocks in

March 27, 2012 10 Comments

Venice doesn’t have a bishop — you may be fascinated to know — it has a patriarch. And as of last Sunday, it has a new one: Francesco Moraglia, who has now been launched to a higher sphere from modest but reverendable monsignor to patriarch and, very soon, to cardinal. Next stop? We don’t speak its name, but we know it’s there.

Three patriarchs of Venice in the 20th century were elected pope (Pius X, John XXIII, and John Paul I). Which means that one reason — perhaps the main reason — why it took six months to decide on the new occupant of the patriarch’s palace could be that the man needed to be considered papabile, as they say: “pope-able.”

As you can imagine, his welcome ceremony was a many-splendored thing, but the centerpiece — and the piece feasible only in Venice — was a corteo, or procession, of boats in the Grand Canal.

Corteos, if you do them right (as in: have lots of participants), are impressive when seen from the shore/bridge/parapet/balcony or wherever the viewer may be positioned. Certainly they’re impressive as seen from the vessel carrying the person being corteo’d.

IMG_4601 pat — The corteo finally begins. Some rowers, like the ones on the green boat, evidently have a different idea about what "dressing up for company" means.

Corteos, as seen from the boats involved, have a much different character. They are composed of friends — or people who know each other, anyway — and what may look like a stately progress is actually a continual jockeying for position in a limited space complicated by vaporettos, gusts of wind, and tidal forces. All of these factors conduce to moments of vivacious confusion which most of the rowers astern, responsible for steering, know how to navigate. I can promise you, however, that there will be at least one boat whose poppiere has a very uncertain grasp of the connection between the action of the oar and the reaction of the boat. Fancy way of saying: helplessly wandering hither and yon like a rudderless boat on the high seas. This person, whoever it may be, is always happiest right in front of us.

IMG_4569 pat — Don Marcello, the parish priest of San Giobbe, showed up to row in his cassock, just as he did for the previous patriarch, he told the Gazzettino, as well as Popes Benedict XVI and Paul VI.

The Gazzettino reported that there were some 200 boats in the procession, and I can believe it. I think most of them, though, were there for the event in its Venetian, rather than spiritual, aspect. I’m not saying rowers are godless, I’m just saying that the mass of participants seemed to be divided into two groups: Bunches of people along the fondamentas with welcome banners who were singing hymns , and us in the boats who were living another sort of moment.

The routine usually goes like this: The boats gather in the Grand Canal at Piazzale Roma. We go to the command-post boat if we’re due any bonuses (T-shirts, bandannas, small bags of rations usually containing a sandwich, bottle of water or carton of fruit juice, a small pastry or piece of fruit.) You lounge around and keep track of your friends. At this point in my evolution here, there’s quite a list.

IMG_4589 pat — We must have waited half an hour in front of the train station for Mons. Moraglia to conclude his prayers ashore. Half an hour is a long time when you're doing nothing.

IMG_4600 pat — But hanging around did give me time to admire this young woman, seemingly no more than 15 years old, who was the master and commander of an 8-oar gondola from the Canottieri Mestre rowed entirely by people her age.

Small organizational point: Unlike most processions, which are in the morning, we were summoned to appear at 1:45 PM. This seemingly innocuous moment effectively wipes Sunday off your calendar, when you calculate the time needed to get to your boat, row it to Piazzale Roma, do the corteo, and row home. The fact that the timing effectively wiped your lunch hour off your calendar was also noticed. That’s why they gave us sandwiches. Not much to keep you going till dinnertime, but if you came, you’d already accepted this fact.

We get the signal to start, and we proceed down the canal to the bacino of San Marco, dodging taxis and vaporettos and gondoliers and each other’s oars. The principles of defensive driving all come into immediate play for the half-hour or so it usually takes to run this 3.7 km/2.3 mile route.

I’d never seen so many boats in a procession, not even when we put on the same event in 2002 for the recently-departed predecessor. The sun was shining, the breeze was generally docile, and we were going mostly with the tide.

The only drawback was the long wait for the patriarch to finish his invisible ceremonies ashore, board his boat, and get going. When the tide is pulling you along and large public conveyances keep jostling for space, you don’t really feel like hanging around, even for an Eminence. Rowers began to murmur and to comment.

But finally we were on our way. We managed to put on a burst of speed to get past the small boat slewing around in front of us. We waved to Lino’s sisters on the fondamenta. And when we passed under the Rialto Bridge and saw the straight stretch of Grand Canal covered with boats spread out before us, Lino actually got a little choked up. I can’t remember what he said, but I looked up and his eyes were wet. Just in case you think we get all blase and jaded about everything.

As the patriarch debarked at San Marco, the gathered boats gave the customary alzaremi, or raised-oar salute. It’s spectacular when done right, or even just sort of right. The annoying part for the executors of this feat isn’t the weight of the oar as you haul it upright (I discovered a trick) — it’s the way the water runs down the shaft and onto your hands. I have no picture of it because I was busy with my oar.

Then we row back to the club, across the bacino of San Marco, which will always be full of big heavy clashing waves. You may well also have the wind and tide against you, so by the time you get the boat ashore you’ve forgotten how much fun you had.

IMG_4579 pat — The prow of a mega-gondola is a magnificent place from which to view the corteo. But I still can't figure out how the man is sitting. There's exactly the same area available on the right as you see on the left of the little flag. Where are his legs? Are his feet trailing in the water?

But enough about me. I can tell you that the new patriarch has already remarked that he believes one of our main priorities needs to be to make children happy. He put that in his short list of things we need to take more seriously, like create more jobs and be more just and fair in our dealings.

My inner Protestant (I.P.) finds this an amazingly dim recommendation. If making children happy is a goal, I can turn over and go back to sleep, because that must be the easiest thing on earth to do. Unload a dump truck full of sugar and fat and iEverything and then leave them alone. My I.P. — who is as devoted to children and their well-being as anyone, even him — would have preferred to hear something a little less fluffy. If happy children are what we want, I think our mission should be to make sure they’re educated, healthy, disciplined, kind, at least bilingual and don’t smoke. I suspect that happiness would be within their own grasp at that point, and wouldn’t have to be provided by a squad of round-the-clock muffinbrains.

Feel free to pass this observation along to him.

IMG_4611 pat — More hanging around waiting, this time in front of the basilica of the Madonna della Salute, while the patriarch went inside to pay his respects to her. The golden curly thing is the stern of the "Dogaressa," the ceremonial boat that carried the pope last May. A good sign?

IMG_4617 pat — Some of us managed to find a parking place in front of the church, so we could relax during the interval.

IMG_4624 pat — Lack of food? Overcome by emotion? Meditating? Or just saving his strength for the next leg of the journey?

IMG_4632 pat — The "disdotona," or 18-oar gondola, belonging to the Querini rowing club, is easily the most spectacular boat in Venice and is always the sign of a Truly Important Event. The only drawback is finding a parking place.

IMG_4633 pat — The patriarch comes out of the basilica to wild acclaim. Wild, anyway, to everyone except the woman seated with her dog on the steps, reading the paper.

IMG_4633 pat 2 — She’s probably reading the big article about the patriarch's arrival and wondering when he's supposed to show up.

IMG_4635 pat — I love this woman! She is totally impossible to impress! She's looking at her DOG.

IMG_4635 pat 2 — "Just be patient -- he'll be along sooner or later."

IMG_4640 pat — Setting off on the last leg of the trip, across the Grand Canal to the Piazza San Marco. The police escort is an impressive touch -- we never see these zippy little craft except on big occasions. The firemen have them too. The men probably draw lots because everybody must want to drive them.

IMG_4640 pat 2 — He looks happy and that makes me feel good. And he gets ten bonus points for standing up in the boat, a position he maintained, according to the Gazzettino, for the entire corteo. I have to say, that's cool.

Venetian Events, Water

Papal visit: the party’s over

May 9, 2011 7 Comments

IMG_6770 pope 1 — The papal banner was waving everywhere, including the F. Morosini Naval College. Gold and white were the colors of the entire weekend.

The one and a half days that the Pope spent in and around Venice have left a pleasant glow, it appears, in the hearts of virtually everyone, even the gondoliers. There was a special glow radiating from the Patriarch of Venice, too, which shone, in my opinion, from the eternal flame in his innermost being where his desire to become Pope burns night and day.

But there was no sturm, neither was there any drang. The four gondoliers who rowed His Holiness across the Grand Canal all said they got really emotional; one even said he had goosebumps when it struck him he was rowing the Pope himself.

My goosebumps were also abundant but they were caused less by emotion (sorry) than by the relentless cold wind which was blowing from the east on Saturday afternoon.

IMG_6758 pope 1 — Some unidentified official -- there were so many -- helping to spiff up the rope line.

Lino and I, along with about 50 other people, waited outdoors at the Naval College to greet the Pope as he passed from his helicopter to the motor launch. Wind is fine, but we ended up standing for three solid hours out there, drastically underdressed. So I win two extra points for having chills even before the Pope appeared.

A few of my other memories are similarly physical. Speaking of standing for three hours (his helicopter landed at the Naval College 45 minutes late) the wind wasn’t the worst part. It was only the suspense of waiting that smothered the desperate Mayday-Maydays from my feet.

IMG_6866 pope 2 — I still love them. I just don't want to wear them. At least not for several whiles.

I can tell you that if the Pope had looked at my feet, he’d have seen two attractive beige pumps with a moderately low heel. If he’d looked at my face, he would have realized that this footwear had been designed by Torquemada, the “hammer of the heretics.” Lino helped me limp home.

The Pope himself, I can confirm from very close range, is very small, very thin, and very old. All those vestments and the magical amplifying effects of television obscure these facts.

I was also musing — as I stood there, resisting hypothermia — on how relatively simple it appears to be Pope, in the sense that his every moment is managed by phalanxes of people of every description. The area was pullulating with important men who couldn’t keep still. They arrived, they departed, singly or in small groups, while we all tried to interpret what significance these movements might have. Naval people, from the Commandant down to the sailor with the bosun’s whistle, mixed with lots of men in dark suits and dark glasses who looked like narcs.

IMG_6749 pope 1 — The Guardia di Finanza provided one of several extra-large boats. Perhaps they couldn't find a minesweeper in time.

As for maintaining the safety of the area, there were firemen, divers in wetsuits checking the underwater area where his launch was waiting; State Police, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza, Civil Protection, Capitanerie di Porto. Any entity whose agents are entitled to wear a uniform, or a badge, or carry some communication device, had somebody there.

IMG_6769 pope 1 — The college chaplain, Father/Brother Manuel Paganuzzi, and the Commandant, Captain Enrico Pacioni, seem to have just remembered they forgot something.

When the Pope arrived, all these armed people were supplemented by priests and deacons and bishops, assigned to carry things. He doesn’t travel with one large suitcase, he divides his necessities among four or five carry-on bags. And other variously shaped containers. The Pope himself was almost an afterthought to all this entourage. (Suddenly I”m wondering whether in the throes of all these aides, assistants, keepers, hewers of wood and drawers of water, whether His Holiness could just walk away. It might be days before anybody realized he was gone.)

IMG_6766 pope 1 — The first wave of bearers and beaters has just arrived; the Pope must be somewhere close by.

Of course all this is necessary. It was already known that the Secret Service had spent days checking every single palace lining the Grand Canal, ringing the doorbells of everybody who had an apartment with a Canal-facing window and asking for names, dates, and serial numbers (so to speak).

IMG_6773 pope 1 — Suddenly, the Pope breaks from cover.

Of course this is normal procedure, it’s just that when you think of having to accomplish that little task here, you suddenly realize how many palaces and windows there are along the wettest main street in the world. But it had to be done. No agent wants to be the one who didn’t manage to speak to little old Mrs. Tagliapietra on the fourth floor and find out too late that she let in somebody Sunday morning who claimed to want to read the gas meter.

Sunday morning was the big mass on the mainland for some 300,000 of the faithful. Then he got into his launch and headed back to Venice, and finally the big boat procession in the Grand Canal was on.

IMG_6775 pope 1 — I know they're all there to help, but any cardinal who suffers from claustrophobia shouldn't even think about becoming Pope.

IMG_6784 pope 1 — Captain Pacioni salutes the pontiff as he boards the floating Popemobile. Angelo Cardinal Scola, Patriarch of Venice, awaits his turn. To get on the launch, I mean.

IMG_6789 pope 1 — Buttoning up to keep out the cold wind. Wish I'd had a couple of vestments, I could really have used them in that wind.

IMG_6792 pope 1 — And off they go. The lagoon waters for miles around were totally calm -- nobody dared to speed with the flotilla of big official boats standing guard.

We were long since at our assigned place. We tied up the boat at about 11:45. Then we waited. (“Papal Visit” translates into the Real-Life Dialect as “Bring a book and food and a jacket and make sure they leave the light on for you.”)

Finally, at about 1:30, came the long-awaited moment. The sun was shining, the breeze had gone down somewhat, and there were more boats than I’ve seen in a corteo in quite some time. Big, important, glamorous boats. I would never presume to compare the emotion generated by the Pontifex Maximus to that generated by masses of Venetian boats, but I can tell you one thing:

It’s the only procession I’ve participated in that called to mind the emotions experienced by Venetians in centuries past at similar visitations. Because while the procession for the Festa de la Sensa is nice, and the procession for the Regata Storica is just one postcard after another, these are merely re-evocations of a remote event. This was an event in itself; it wasn’t replicating anything. I’m not sure I ever thought this was possible anymore.

My feet have their own thoughts, however, and they are not happy ones. And the shoes have been sent to the corner for a very, very long Time Out.