Page 32 - LOTN Summer Issue 47 2021

FAITH AND CULTURE

A fresco from the Civic Museum of Lecco shows the city as it would have looked in the 17th century.
of Europe”. More than 25,000 North Africans have tragically other plague-sufferers. Given the present coronavirus
lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean, to begin pandemic, we can all too readily imagine the horrific scenes
a new life for themselves in the land of Jorge Bergoglio’s that were accurately depicted by Manzoni, and were based
ancestors. It is little wonder then that the Pope, given his on a contemporary eyewitness account. 4
own family history, could understand and sympathise In his August 2013 interview with Fr. Antonio Spadaro,
with their plight. In his powerful homily of 8 July 2013, the editor of the Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica, Pope
during the Mass at the Arena Sports Camp on Lampedusa, Francis used this very image to describe his vision of the
Francis asked the following question: “Who is responsible Church as a tender mother, able to heal wounds and to
for this blood?” By way of answer, he actually cited one of warm the hearts of the faithful: “I see the Church as a field-
Manzoni’s own villainous characters in The Betrothed: “Here hospital. It is useless to ask a seriously-injured person if
we can think of Manzoni’s character – “the Unnamed”. he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood
The globalization of indifference makes us all “unnamed”, sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we talk about
responsible, yet nameless and faceless.” Pope Francis is everything else.” It is surely no accident that the Pope had
3
keen to attend to those on the margins, whether in a literal a copy of The Betrothed on his desk during the interview.
or figurative sense, and he is impelled by a strong sense of For Austen Ivereigh, the lazzaretto is an “extraordinarily
defending the dignity of every human being, and of having powerful” metaphor for the Church “as a channel of mercy,
a ‘preferential option for the poor’. rather than a regulator and rule maker.” 5
At the conclusion of The Betrothed, the two separated There are numerous reasons to read The Betrothed: it is
lovers are joyfully reunited amidst the gruesome backdrop a story that represents universal and timeless values, such
of plague-ridden Milan, and are finally able to marry. Renzo as good versus evil, and the oppression of the poor by the
discovers Lucia in a lazzaretto, or makeshift hospital, where powerful, who are eventually cast down (“he has put down
our poor heroine is languishing, together with some 16,000 the mighty from their thrones and raised up the lowly”); it
exalts the virtues of chastity, patience, and perseverance
– and is thus instructive for engaged couples; and it also
For a discussion of the medieval Florentine poet Dante represents the relationship between God and us, His
1
Alighieri, see the previous edition of Light of the North (issue people.
46, Spring 2021). I leave the final word with the Holy Father. During the
2
Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making General Audience of 27 May 2015, Pope Francis made the
of a Radical Pope (London: Allen & Unwin, 2014), pp. 14-15. following declaration: “God, too, when he speaks of the
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2013/ covenant with His people, does so several times in terms of
3
documents/papa-francesco_20130708_omelia-lampedusa.html betrothal. The road the Lord takes with his people on this
Giuseppe Ripamonti, De peste quae fuit anno 1630 (published betrothal journey is a long one. At the end, God espouses
4
in 1640). his people in Jesus Christ. In Jesus He marries the Church.
5
Ivereigh, The Great Reformer, p. 169.
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