Mar 16 - From The Vatican, With Love
By Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga
I remember the last two fumate bianche with clarity. I've always been into the Popes, and the church, and religious art, and its history and stories, but I've never felt very religious. In fact, I am a Roman Catholic and never felt more Catholic than when I was in Rome (which took me twenty six years). Of course, it's difficult, almost impossible to get away from religion in Italy, let alone in Rome. But if there's one thing I really like about the church is our new Pope. Well, he's been there for more than a year, if I'm not mistaken, but he's so fresh it feels like he came into office just yesterday. I can't get enough of him. I wish he was my grandfather, or my mentor, my sensei, my whatever. I love him. Oh and he's Argentinian, and I love Argentinians because they are beautiful people with a beautiful accent, who like and know how to have a good time.So being in Rome, and walking around the Vatican was pretty great, because even if I didn't get to physically see him - through a window where you can usually catch him hanging out on his balcony at a certain time of day, waving to the people - as was explained on the tour (shout out to our Gibraltarian tour guide, Anita Serra, highly recommended, who gave us the best tour and even let me use her stick with a Gib flag to guide the group), seeing his face on every little bit of merchandise was still good enough; I even gave in and got myself a Papa Francesco t-shirt (and matching one for my friend Alex).
I came home on a Pope high, and about a month later during my morning shower I came up with an idea; there was no more apt way of professing my adoration for this lovely man than doing it the millennial way: opening a Facebook page. Now, I casually run a couple of these and this was before I took over my work's Facebook page, and I've never been in any "fan club" so I really had no clue how these things work. I was thinking of what a fan club was and how they existed in real life and then about how they would transfer to the digital realm. But I really didn't think too hard and just made the Pope Francis Gibraltar Fan Club for all to like and for all to share comments on how much of a cool Pope he is (sorry Ratzinger). For a bit I really wasn't sure if I wanted to oust myself as the twenty six year old with what seems like nothing better to do than create weird Facebook pages, and I also didn't want it to seem like I was taking the mickey. But I started to invite people, I even (embarrassingly) promoted the page to get more people to notice it (just a couple dollars). Slowly but surely people started catching on. Mind you, not that well, I've only just surpassed the sixty likes, but I also don't take much care of the page, I could definitely post a few more photos here and there, I don't know. But what I'm getting at is that slowly an interest was generated. And as strange as I felt creating the page nothing prepared me for the messages some people started leaving. Most of the time it was regular likes on the few posts on the page but then I realised some woman in Brazil was constantly posting to the page, on the page's wall. Whilst at first it just seemed like little prayers, or images like the ones your aunt posts on her wall, I started to notice she was writing messages as if directly to the Pope, starting them with, "your holiness Pope Francis" and signing off with a nice "very truly yours". Strange! But you know, some people are like that, cool. Then she redirected my attention to the page's inbox, where she'd written a huge Christmas message and shared photos of the cristo redentor and Pope John Paul II, amongst a bunch of Facebook chat big thumbs up. I kind of froze, and only knew to return a single thumb.
I'm not going to lie, I was a little confused about the situation, why this woman IN BRAZIL was messaging this Facebook fan page about the Pope, from Gibraltar and why she was writing like the messages were actually getting to the Pope himself. But anyway, this was last Christmas and the activity on the page was so low that I would've forgotten it exists were it not for the regular updates and weekly rundowns Facebook gives if you admin a page. Well, the silence didn't last very long as sometime mid February I logged onto Facebook first thing in the morning, in my dentist's waiting room, and saw a notification saying I had received a direct (or private) message to my Pope page. And there it was, a badly written, but serious message from a man I hadn't heard of before. The time: 5:51am. What's troubling these people at five in the morning? Why is the state of the church with its allegations of paedophilia (as serious as the matter is) keeping somebody up at five in the morning? Then I realised the person lives in Australia and it was more of a siesta thought. But anyway, I read through all of these things, including the spelling and grammar errors and realised that this man, in his probably late sixties or seventies was truly worried by the state of the church. So I decided to reply. Then he replied, this time longer than the original post, and more elaborate. He was telling me I had to tell God to send Jesus to Australia, I don't know, but I had to reassure him that everything would be all right.
Then I did some snooping around his profile and the texts from mum type status updates just confirmed what I was thinking deep down (but didn't want to admit): this man really thought he was talking to the Pope. On Facebook. Papa Francesco, su Facebook. I couldn't just leave this man hanging! So I gave him a "I will try", and thought that was the end of that. But then about fourteen or fifteen days ago, when I thought he had maybe realised this wasn't the Pope, or he had become bored of writing to the Pope, he came back even stronger, with suggestions on how the Pope should change the way the church works, and I replied to that as Pope-like as I could, and to more messages, and I tried to make him understand how being a Pope is a difficult job, then he invited me (Pope Francis) to Australia and to his home where we would "catch up" and I told him that would be nice, and blessed him and then it hit me, on a Friday afternoon, that I had been catfishing a man on the other side of the world just as he was getting into bed; and for a couple hours I really didn't know what to think of myself. I felt bad, but I felt good that I had made him see that some things in life are difficult (like changing the way the church works after so many years) and that I had made him happy, but then I thought that he was convinced I was the Pope. I felt really, really strange, let me tell you. But then I had a couple of beers, forgot about being the Pope and made a note on my phone that I should write about this.
Check out: stefanoblanca.com
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