Venice Italy — Venice has always been a place of contrasts, of stunning beauty and devastating fragility, where history, religion, art and nature have collided over the centuries to produce an otherworldly gem of a city. But even for a place that prides itself on its culture of unusual encounters, Pope Francis’ visit on Sunday stands out.
Francis travels to Venice to see the Holy See’s pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale. It’s a first for a pope and has given the 60th edition of the world’s oldest international art exhibition cause for another round of headlines.
The Vatican decided to set up its pavilion inside the Venice women’s prison and, through an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Justice, invited the inmates to work alongside the artists. The result is a multimedia exhibition “With my eyes”, which is open to the public only by reservation and under strict security conditions.
Francis will tour the exhibition, meet with inmates and then address Venice’s broader art community inside the prison chapel, which was once a convent for reformed prostitutes.
The Vatican exhibition has made the convent-prison one of the must-see attractions of this year’s Biennale, an unusual art world attraction that greets visitors at the entrance with a mural of two giant, dirty feet of Maurizio Cattelan. The work, titled “Father,” recalls Caravaggio’s dirty feet or the feet that Francis washes each year in a Holy Thursday ritual he routinely performs for prisoners.
After that meeting, Francis heads by boat through the Giudecca Canal to the emblematic Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice to meet with the young people. He is then driven by golf cart across a purpose-built pontoon bridge over the Grand Canal to Piazza San Marco, where he celebrates mass in the shadow of the city’s spectacular Byzantine basilica.
Francis’ whirlwind morning visit, which will end before lunchtime, represents an increasingly rare outing for the 87-year-old pontiff, who has been plagued by health and mobility problems that have ruled out any foreign travel so far. that is of the year.
But it is also unusual because it comes as Venice, sinking under rising sea levels and burdened by the impact of overtourism, is in the early days of an experiment to try to limit the type of day trips it is taking. Francisco.
Venetian authorities last week launched a pilot program to charge hikers 5 euros ($5.35) each on peak travel days. The goal is to encourage them to stay longer or come during off-peak hours to reduce crowding and make the city more liveable for its dwindling number of residents.
For Venice’s Catholic patriarch, Archbishop Francesco Moraglia, the new tax program is a worthwhile experiment, a potential necessary evil in trying to preserve Venice as a livable city for visitors and residents alike.
“Venice must be defended as a polis, as a city,” Moraglia said in an interview on the eve of Francis’ visit. “The city runs the risk of ceasing to be a city; “It runs the risk of becoming a cultural offering, an open-air museum.”
Moraglia said Francis’ visit was a welcome boost, especially for the women of the Giudecca prison who participate in the exhibition as tour guides and as protagonists of some of the artworks.
“These are places of sadness, of suffering, and for these people that someone of global importance like the Pope comes to Venice to see them is a real and concrete encouragement,” he said. “And there is also a message for the city and civil society: those who make a mistake must pay, but they cannot be forgotten.”
In fact, one of the exhibits in the prison is a neon sign in the inner courtyard, by the Claire Fontaine art collective, that reads: “Siamo con voi nella notte” (We are with you at night).
Moraglia acknowledged that over the centuries Venice has had a long and complicated love-hate relationship with the papacy, despite its central importance to Christianity.
The relics of Saint Mark, the main collaborator of Saint Peter, the first Pope, are kept here in the basilica, which is one of the most important in all of Christendom. Several popes have been natives of Venice; In the last century alone, three pontiffs were elected after being patriarchs of Venice. Venice hosted the last conclave held outside the Vatican: the 1799-1800 vote that elected Pope Paul VII.
But for centuries before that, relations between the independent Republic of Venice and the Papal States were anything but cordial, as the two sides dueled for control of the Church. The popes of Rome issued prohibitions against Venice that essentially excommunicated the entire territory. Venice showed its strength by expelling entire religious orders, including Francis’s own Jesuits.
“It’s a story of contrasts because they were two competitors for many centuries,” said Giovanni Maria Vian, a church historian and retired editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, whose family is originally from Venice. “The papacy wanted to control everything and Venice jealously guarded its independence.”
Moraglia said the turbulent history is long past and Venice welcomed Francis with open arms and gratitude, in keeping with its history as a bridge between cultures, even opposing ones.
“The history of Venice, the DNA of Venice, beyond the language of beauty and the culture that unifies, there is this historical character who says that Venice has always been a meeting place,” he said.
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Winfield reported from Rome. Associated Press writer Colleen Barry contributed.