Venice Biennale Holy See Pavilion: Art and Cities of Refuge

Pope Francis visited the Vatican’s exhibits at an international art show last Sunday.

So this week I’ll talk about the Venice Biennale, why “With My Eyes” doesn’t horrify me, share a few quotes, and show pictures from “Con i miei occhi”.

• Venice Biennale Arte 2024: Propriety, Changes, and Context
  • Plentiful Protest Possibilities
  • That’s Odd: Labels, People, and Art
  • Groucho Marx, Samuel Clemens, and “The Whole Law and the Prophets”
• “Strangers” and “Foreigners”, an Etymological Aside
• Pop Art, Patriotism, and Perceptions
  • Loving America Anyway
  • Living in Isaiah’s World
• A Glimpse Behind Cattelan’s Feet at the Venice Art Biennale
  • “Con i miei occhi” / “With my Eyes”
• “A City of Refuge”, “The World Needs Artists”, and Pope Francis
  • Moses, George Washington, and Me
  • Personal Perspective, Catholic Concerns

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Venice Biennale Arte 2024: Propriety, Changes, and Context

After skimming the English translation of what Pope Francis had said, I checked into the Venice Biennale.

Turns out that it’s a cultural exhibition Venice has hosted yearly since 1895. Or since 1880, if you count the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Almost yearly. World Wars I and II caused gaps, and so did the COVID-19 pandemic.

The art, music, and other creative displays have been getting increasingly international: and deliberately inclusive, although I didn’t find that word in the Venice Biennale English-language introductions.

Biennale Arte 2024

Introduction by Pietrangelo Buttafuoco
President of La Biennale di Venezia
“…This edition of the Biennale Arte features both a contemporary and a historical nucleus, with a large presence of Italian artists from the 20th-century diaspora, … For the first time, an indigenous Amazonian art collective — MAHKU (Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin) — also takes centre stage, with a large-scale work on the facade of the Central Pavilion. Seven hundred square metres of hallucinatory visions inspired by sacred ayahuasca-based rituals, experiences mirrored by those – no less sacred – that the Old Continent has experimented through, for example, Ernst Jünger’s Annäherungen…”

Introduction by Adriano Pedrosa
Curator of the 60th International Art Exhibition
“…Nucleo Storico” (“Historical Core”) …
“The Italian stranieri, the Portuguese estrangeiro, the French étranger, … the strange that is also familiar, within, deep down side. According to the American Heritage and the Oxford Dictionaries, the first meaning of the word queer is strange, and thus the Exhibition unfolds and focuses on the production of other related subjects: the queer artist, who has moved within different sexualities and genders, often being persecuted or outlawed; the outsider artist, who is located at the margins of the art world, much like the self-taught artist, the folk artist and the artista popular; as well as the indigenous artist, frequently treated as a foreigner in his or her own land….”
[emphasis from Adriano Pedrosa’s text]

There’s ample opportunity for pearl-clutching here: like Adriano Pedrosa’s “queer artist” instead of LGBT of LGBTI+. Or, since “queer” may no longer be verboten, not inclusively using LGBTQ+ or LGBTIQA+.

It’s so hard to keep up with what’s proper and what’s not, which is one reason I often stick with established and bookish terminology. When discussing hot-button topics, that is.

Then there’s Pietrangelo Buttafuoco’s reference to ayahuasca.

I gather that it’s “a South American psychoactive brew”, or “a plant-based psychedelic”.

As far as I can tell, ayahuasca is a sort of South American moonshine, except that instead of being a depressant, ayahuasca acts as a stimulant.

It may be hallucinogenic, too; increasing activity in the visual cortex while triggering access to memories.¹

Plentiful Protest Possibilities

I’ve wondered how coffee would get classified, if it hadn’t become thoroughly embedded in my culture by the time gems like “Reefer Madness” and “The Devil’s Weed” hit the silver screen.

And that’s another topic.

Or maybe not so much.

I’d expected howls of anguish over Pope Francis visiting the Venice Biennale, and artwork at the Holy See’s Pavillion: which is inside the Giudecca Women’s Prison. But so far I’ve seen nothing in my news feed’s op-eds, or on social media.

Maybe that’s because I don’t actively seek commentary from assorted lunatic fringes.

Or maybe it’s because my country’s election-year uproar is already at around 10 on the Beaufort scale.

Now, besides campus chaos, wars and rumors of wars, and the usual run of natural disasters, it looks like the DEA finally got around to learning what marijuana actually does.

“US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana in a historic shift, AP sources say“
Zeke Miller, Joshua Goodman, Jim Mustian, Lindsay Whitehurst; AP News (April 30, 2024)

“… The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, The Associated Press has learned, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country….

“…Once OMB signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to move marijuana from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids, following a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department. After the public comment period and a review by an administrative judge, the agency would eventually publish the final rule….”

I’ve talked about that before.²

I won’t mind if what Pope Francis said about art and artists doesn’t inspire another round of earnest protest. But I won’t be surprised if it does.

That’s Odd: Labels, People, and Art

“Venice Biennale titled ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ platforms LGBTQ+, outsider and Indigenous artists“
Colleen Barry, AP (April 20, 2024)

“Outsider, queer and Indigenous artists are getting an overdue platform at the 60th Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition that opened Saturday, curated for the first time by a Latin American.

“Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa’s main show, which accompanies 88 national pavilions for the seven-month run, is strong on figurative painting, with fewer installations than recent editions. A preponderance of artists are from the Global South, long overlooked by the mainstream art world circuits. Many are dead. Frida Kahlo, for example, is making her first appearance at the Venice Biennale. Her 1949 painting ‘Diego and I’ hangs alongside one by her husband and fellow artist, Diego Rivera….”

One of the problems, arguably, with labels like “commie” or “racist” is that what’s an insult or threat in one generation may become another generation’s cherished title.

Take “Yankee”, for example. It started as an ethnic slur — the story’s not simple, but this’ll do for today — directed at one set of New Englanders. Then Englishmen who weren’t colonists used it as an insulting label for all New Englanders.

Later, as colonists in New England got fed up with the status quo, “Yankee” became the proud name of those Americans. A few centuries later — it’s complicated.

The point I was groping for is that one generation’s insult can become another generation’s badge of excellence.

That seems to be happening with the word “queer”.

A century or so back, the word simply meant “strange” or “peculiar”. It still does, in some contexts, although I wouldn’t risk using it.

By the late 1800s, it got used as an insult to LGBT — that acronym is apparently still an acceptable label — folks, and by now it’s got a status similar to “Yankee”.

Another point, before moving along.

“Outsiders” in the context of that AP article are probably folks who do outsider art. Outsider art is not, oddly enough, landscape art or art intended for display outside. It’s art made by folks who aren’t trained as artists, or part of the “art world”.

Just to keep things confusing, outsider art can include art movements that are, arguably, part of the art world.

You want simple? Read a spy thriller, or listen to political speeches.

Just one more item: seeing the artist as an “outsider” may be a fairly recent development in Western civilization.³ Recent by my standards, that is.

Groucho Marx, Samuel Clemens, and “The Whole Law and the Prophets”

Thinking about respectability reminded me of a Mark Twain quote — which I learned is a Groucho Marx quote:

“I sent the club a wire stating, ‘PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER’.”
(Groucho Marx, Telegram to the Friar’s Club of Beverly Hills to which he belonged, as recounted in Groucho and Me (1959) via Wikiquote)

There’s at least one other version of that Groucho Marx quote. Remembering it as a Mark Twain wisecrack wasn’t entirely unreasonable. Samuel Clemens made a similar quip, back in 1867.

“…’If I were settled I would quit all nonsense & swindle some girl into marrying me,’ Clemens wrote Mary Mason Fairbanks. ‘But I wouldn’t expect to be “worthy” of her. I wouldn’t have a girl that I was worthy of. She wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t be respectable enough.’ The letter was written on 12 December 1867, just fifteen days before he met Olivia Langdon, the woman he would in fact marry a little more than two years later….”
(“Getting to be Mark Twain“, Jeffrey Steinbrink, (1991) © 1991 The Regents of the University of California, University of California Press via UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004, formerly eScholarship Editions) [emphasis from Samuel Clemens’ text]

Finally, before getting to the Holy See’s art show at the Venice Biennale, something Samuel Clemens said about love of country: and rules that are simple, but incredibly hard to follow.

“I would throw out the old maxim, ‘My country, right or wrong,’ etc., and instead I would say, ‘My country when she is right.’ Because patriotism is supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it.”
(Address to the Male Teachers Association of the City of New York (March 16, 1901), Mark Twain, as reported in The New York Times, via Wikiquote)

I’ll talk about “patriotism” and love of country a little later; along with how experiences of my youth colored my views.

I should — along with civil authorities — contribute to “…the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom….” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2239)

That’s not easy, but it ties in with what Jesus said about “the whole law and the prophets”.

“‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’
He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.'”
(Matthew 22:36–40)

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“Strangers” and “Foreigners”, an Etymological Aside

“Pope visits Venice to speak to the artists and inmates behind the Biennale’s must-see prison show“
Associated Press, NBC News (April 28, 2024)
“He urged the artists to embrace the Biennale’s theme this year, ‘Strangers Everywhere,’ to show solidarity with all those on the margins.”

“Francis traveled to the lagoon city to visit the Holy See’s pavilion at the Biennale contemporary art show and meet with the people who created it. But because the Vatican decided to mount its exhibit in Venice’s women’s prison, and invited inmates to collaborate with the artists, the whole project assumed a far more complex meaning, touching on Francis’ belief in the power of art to uplift and unite, and of the need to give hope and solidarity to society’s most marginalized….”

La Biennale di Venezia’s website is in Italian, with translations in English and other languages available. At least I assume it’s “languages”.

The only alternative I found was English, which is just as well: since that’s the only language I’m even close to being fluent in.

Anyway, La Biennale di Venezia translates Italian “Stranieri Ovunque” into English as “Foreigners Everywhere”.

I’m not why NBC News (and a few other outlets) translated it as “Strangers Everywhere”. Google Translate changes (Italian) “Stranieri Ovunque” into (English) “Strangers Everywhere”.

I’m inclined to think that the folks running La Biennale di Venezia are more accurate, with their “Foreigners Everywhere” rendering.

Interestingly, when I told Google Translate that “Stranieri Ovunque” was a German phrase, I got “Stranger Things” as the English translation.

That makes sense, since English (probably) got “stranger” from Old French “estrangier”. Latin used an adjective, “extraneus”, as a noun meaning “stranger”.

(Old) French “estrangier” became “estrange” in my language; “estrangier” came from Vulgar Latin extraneare, “to treat as a stranger”. And that came from Latin extraneus, “foreign, from without”.⁴

Basically, I figure that “stranger” is a good-enough translation of “stranieri”. But that the folks with La Biennale di Venezia did a better job, translating it as “foreigner”.

That’s partly because what I read on their website makes more sense if I apply my language’s connotations for “foreigner”.

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Pop Art, Patriotism, and Perceptions

“The Holy See Pavilion Offers a New Look at The Vatican’s Take on the Biennale“
Caitlin Finley, Whitewall (April 17, 2024)

“…Works by the late Sister Corita Kent will be on display in the facility’s cafeteria, whose Pop Art articulation of social and religious messages echoes the modern mission of the pavilion. Also notable among the pieces offered are a short film by husband-and-wife duo Perego and Saldana as well as choreography by Bintou Dembélé. The film, shot inside the Giudecca Women’s Prison, features performances by inmates as actresses. Dancer and artist Dembélé’s choreography will feature inmates as dancers, performing their own stories from their points of view. These works challenge perceptions of people convicted of crimes, allowing the women to reframe their existence on their own terms….”
[emphasis mine]

There’s a lot going on here, but I’ll focus on Caitlin Finley’s lack of outrage at inmates of a women’s prison performing as actresses and dancers — and Sister Mary Corita / Corita Kent’s Camus quote.

I’ll take the Whitewall article’s apparently neutral or positive view of inmates as actresses as indirect evidence that WiP exploitation films aren’t front and center as occasions for (self?) righteous indignation.

I don’t mind living in an era where Boston Brahmins lack the clout they once enjoyed.

I’d prefer living in a world where women — in prison or otherwise — and men were both regarded as people, persons, individuals who share humanity’s transcendent dignity. (Catechism, 1929)

But that’s still a work in progress.

Now, about that Camus quote.

I’m not sure why finding reference to it, apart from Corita Kent’s 1960s art, was so hard.⁵ And why the only place I found the Camus quote discussed with its context was in a conservative publication.

“Camus Writes To A German Friend“
“The French existentialist takes the measure of a friend who became a Nazi”
Rod Dreher, The American Conservative (October 17, 2017)

“The French existentialist Albert Camus wrote a series of letters to a German friend during World War II. The friend had become a Nazi. Here are a couple of excerpts that remind me of our time and place:

You said to me: ‘The greatness of my country is beyond price. Anything is good that contributes to its greatness. And in a world where everything has lost its meaning, those who, like us young Germans, are lucky enough to find meaning in the destiny of our nation must sacrifice everything else.’ I loved you then, but at that point we diverged. ‘No’, I told you, ‘I cannot believe that everything must be subordinated to a single end. There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don’t want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.’ You retorted: ‘Well, you just don’t love your country.’ …”

I strongly suspect that this is another example of how — just as not all liberals are irresponsible fanatics bent on destroying the very fabric of society — not all conservatives are hidebound reactionaries, incapable of comprehending today’s global realities.

Me? I’m a Catholic. I don’t fit into either political pigeonhole.

Loving America Anyway

This is where I’ll touch on “patriotism” and love of country.

My teens and the 1960s overlap almost exactly.

This is not the America I grew up in. For the most part, I think this is a good thing.

There was a great deal going on in the 1960s besides a growing disgust with a non-war that lacked both perceptible goals and effective promotion. That mess helped shape my views of “patriotism” and what “America” is.

To this day, I think of the “Vietnam War” as the Indochina involvement. It was neither a war nor limited to Vietnam. Not officially a war, that is. My country’s leaders came up with a number of euphemisms, and that’s yet another topic.

By the time it was over, I’d settled for a cerebral appreciation that having governing bodies should be better than anarchy. And a firm conviction that America was a very great deal more than the Yahoos who thought they were running the place.⁶

One more thing: why finding the Camus quote in a conservative publication surprised me. A little.

Ranting radio preachers of my youth, plus the contrast between appeals to reason and variations on the “my country right or wrong” theme, left an impression that “conservative” and blind obedience to authority were linked.

That was the 1970s. I’ve accumulated more experiences since then. Which is yet again another topic.

Living in Isaiah’s World

Repeating what I said earlier: contributing to “…the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom…” is a good idea. (Catechism, 2239)

Loving my country is a good idea. Within reason. But letting love of country become worship of country is a bad idea. A very bad idea. (Catechism, 2112-2114, 2199, 2239)

And since I’m a Catholic, I must act as if good intentions are not an excuse for “intrinsically disordered” behavior. The end does not justify the means. (Catechism, 1753, 1887)

Living in a world where the folks in charge are uniformly reasonable and virtuous would be nice. But that’s not the world I grew up in. It’s not today’s world. And folks with authority behaving badly is nothing new.

“Your princes are rebels
and comrades of thieves;
Each one of them loves a bribe
and looks for gifts.
The fatherless they do not defend,
the widow’s plea does not reach them.”
(Isaiah 1:23)

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A Glimpse Behind Cattelan’s Feet at the Venice Art Biennale

Considering what ‘everybody knows’ about the Catholic Church, this is a quite balanced and objective article.

“Inside the Vatican’s Uncanny Venice Biennale Pavilion“
“Con i miei occhi (With my eyes), staged in a women’s prison, preaches visibility but operates on secrecy.”
Julie Baumgardner, Hyperallergenic (April 29, 2024)

“…The Papacy is an organization that operates on secrecy. God, after all, isn’t exactly a visible figure. Faith requires a leap, a trust in the invisible. And yet visibility is at the heart of the Holy See Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, whose exhibition title, Con i miei occhi (With my eyes), is borrowed from Book of Job 42:5: ‘Mine eyes have seen thee.’ But this isn’t exactly a pavilion about ‘being seen’ in the sense of the English colloquialism denoting empathy and embrace, despite the Church’s attempts.

“No, in fact, the literal infrastructure of the pavilion is hidden. In a prison. The Giudecca Women’s Detention Home is a 13th-century monastery converted into a prison for unwed mothers, sex workers, and mentally ill people in 1859. Curators Chiara Parisi and Bruno Racine selected nine artists to create site-specific works that engage and employ the imprisoned women. Visitors to Parisi and Racine’s exhibition cannot enter (nor exit) freely. It’s a pavilion quite literally hidden behind bars….

I’m sharing these excerpts from the Hyperallergenic article partly because that site’s article is where I found the best collection of images from the Vatican’s/Holy See’s Venice Biennale Arte Pavilion.

And, given my culture’s folklore about an oppressive and un-American Catholic Church: the article is a model of objectivity.

“…It’s here that the group meets the guides: Marceby and Giulia, who both participated in the art-making. Visitors are not allowed to ask the imprisoned women personal questions — where they come from, why they’re there, how long their sentence is….”

“…There’s been critique floating around about the exploitive capacity of the pavilion. But it’s complicated by the voices of the participants. ‘I’m not an artist, but this was an opportunity to be one,’ Marceby said repeatedly during the tour. ‘I get to meet people every day, I get to write poetry, I get to connect to the outside world.’ Can a project like this be an opportunity for empowerment, as suggested by Corita Kent’s adages, and a space for hope, as in Fattal’s or Fontaine’s projects, as much as one that unfairly takes advantage of those who provide labor without receiving the benefit?…”
(“Inside the Vatican’s Uncanny Venice Biennale Pavilion“, Julie Baumgardner, Hyperallergenic (April 29, 2024))

I don’t know what Julie Baumgardner would have written, if the folks running “With my eyes” had been violating the inmates’ privacy by allowing personal questions.

But like I said: her article had by far the best collection of pictures of any I found. Quite a few featured that ‘feet‘ mural by Maurizio Cattelan,⁷ and little else.

This next section is my selection from the Hyperallergenic article’s collection, with a few of my reactions.

“Con i miei occhi” / “With my Eyes”

I gather that “siamo con voi nella notte” started as graffiti in Florence: part of a 1970s Italian prison reform movement. What can I say? I don’t know the cultural and historical context: but can reasonably assume that it makes sense in this setting.

I could tell that this display involved fabric, but wouldn’t have worked out its meaning without program notes:

“…Works by Afro-Brazilian sculptor Sonia Gomes from her series Sinfonia (2021–present), consisting of 34 woven works of fabric, stones, and buttons hanging from the ceiling in the prison’s Baroque Chapel, is a gesture to ‘look up and be free,’ as the artist told the inmates. It hangs between a fresco reading ‘Remissa sunt eius peccata multa’ — ‘Her sins, though many, are forgiven.’ There are still 80 women held at the prison as of press time….”
(“Inside the Vatican’s Uncanny Venice Biennale Pavilion“, Julie Baumgardner, Hyperallergenic (April 29, 2024))

I’m not sure what to make of that “still 80 women held at the prison” remark. Or, for that matter, how many readers of Hyperallergenic understand what the Church says about forgiveness and “the duty of reparation”.

Oversimplifying — a lot — forgiveness is important. So is doing what’s possible to correct the effects of bad behavior. (Catechism, 1485-1492, 2487, 2838-2845, for a very brief overview)

How all that intersects with the Italian penal system: is far more than I know.

Sometimes conceptual artist Claire Fontaine is referred to as “she”, but she’s actually a “they”, or maybe “them”. Either way, I think of Claire Fontaine as a studio who/that started in Paris and is now in Palermo.⁸

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“A City of Refuge”, “The World Needs Artists”, and Pope Francis

Pope Francis made three speeches last Sunday: two of them connected with the Vatican’s contribution to the Venice Art Biennale.

Transcripts of both, in Italian, were online by Sunday afternoon. My afternoon, that is, here in central Minnesota. English translations were online the next morning:

• “Visit to Venice: Meeting with artists — Church of La Maddalena, Prison Chapel on the Island of Giudecca“
  Pope Francis (April 28, 2024)
• “Visit to Venice: Meeting with the Inmates — Internal courtyard of the Venice Women’s Prison on the Island of Giudecca“
  Pope Francis (April 28, 2024)

I’ve read, but not studied, both. Discussing either would take more time than I had left this week, after searching for a usable collection of pictures from the exhibition.

One takeaway, for me, was the pope’s “city of refuge” metaphor:

“…art has the status of a ‘city of refuge’, an entity that disobeys the regime of violence and discrimination in order to create forms of human belonging capable of recognizing, including, protecting and embracing everyone….”
“Visit to Venice: Meeting with artists — Church of La Maddalena, Prison Chapel on the Island of Giudecca“, Pope Francis (April 28, 2024)

I like the “city of refuge” metaphor, although if feels a trifle forced. I suspect some of the pope’s explanation didn’t translate well into my language:

“…The city of refuge is a biblical institution, already mentioned in the Deuteronomic code (cf. Dt 4:41), intended to prevent the shedding of innocent blood and to temper the blind desire for revenge, to guarantee the protection of human rights and to seek forms of reconciliation. It would be important if the various artistic practices could establish themselves everywhere as a sort of network of cities of refuge, cooperating to rid the world of the senseless and by now empty oppositions that seek to gain ground in racism, in xenophobia, in inequality, in ecological imbalance and aporophobia, that terrible neologism that means ‘fear of the poor’….”
“Visit to Venice: Meeting with artists — Church of La Maddalena, Prison Chapel on the Island of Giudecca“, Pope Francis (April 28, 2024) [emphasis in the pope’s text]

In any case, Vatican News talked about the pope’s meeting with artists:

“Pope in Venice: ‘Art is a city of refuge for humanity’“
Lisa Zengarini, Vatican News (April 28, 2024)
“Addressing artists in the Giudecca’s women’s prison facility in Venice, Pope Francis invites everyone to imagine a world where no human being is considered a stranger.”

“‘The world needs artists.’ This was the message Pope Francis imparted on Sunday morning as he met with a group of artists the Holy See is exhibiting at its pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale.

“Addressing the group in the Church of La Maddalena in the Giudecca’s women’s prison facility, the Pope praised artists as true visionaries who can see beyond the boundaries of our world….”

There were three “cities of refuge”:

“Then Moses set apart three cities in the region east of the Jordan,
to which a homicide might flee who killed a neighbor unintentionally, where there had been no hatred previously, so that the killer might flee to one of these cities and live:
Bezer in the wilderness, in the region of the plateau, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.”
(Deuteronomy 4:41–43)

There’s more about how they were supposed to work in Deuteronomy 19:1–13. I could say that I’m shocked and horrified at the appalling lack of conformity to principles established in the United States Constitution: but I won’t.

Old traditions say that Moses wrote Deuteronomy.

More likely, the words of Devarim, דְּבָרִים‎, were scribed about two and a half millennia back: long after Moses lived and died.⁹ I think they very probably reflect what Moses said.

Moses, George Washington, and Me

But then, I’m one of those folks who think that Moses is as real as George Washington: even though the cherry tree incident is almost certainly a whopper.

In my darker moments, I’m surprised that serious thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries didn’t decide that ancient Egypt and the pharaohs were make-believe.¹⁰

I suppose those whacking great piles of rock we call pyramids are hard to imagine away. And that’s still another topic.

Personal Perspective, Catholic Concerns

I’ll be summarizing a half-millennium and more of history, plus what I think explains why Pope Francis seems so interested in immigrants and other outsiders. In a few hundred words.

Hang on to your hats, here I go.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Argentina: the son of an Italian immigrant and an Italian Argentine whose ancestors were from northern Italy. Not far from Jorge’s father’s home, actually: by American standards.

The territory we call Argentina has been part of the Inca and Spanish empires. It didn’t have the Thirteen Colonies’ experience — several more topics — but it’s one of the places Italians moved to, either to get a better life, or get away from trouble at home.

Jorge’s father left Italy when Mussolini and company were active. That was an interesting part of Italy’s story.

Growing up in an immigrant family, in a country that has been going through Latin America’s post-imperial adjustments: I can see why Pope Francis thinks immigrants and folks who aren’t on the world’s A-list matter.

And that strikes me as being consistent with what the Church says about social justice. (Catechism, 1928-1942, 2241)

As for his apparent interest in art: that may run in the family. His niece, Cristina Bergoglio, is an artist who’s now living in Spain.¹¹

More, mainly about a pope and making sense:

• “‘Dignitas Infinita’, ‘Infinite Dignity’: a Very Quick Look“
  (April 13, 2024)
• “Pope Francis, Politics and Being Catholic: Briefly“
  (August 28, 2023)
• “Pope Francis and an Open Catholic Church“
  (August 12, 2023)
• “Pope Francis and ‘The Virtue of Vigilance’“
  (December 23, 2022)
• “The Pope Wasn’t Arrested (or) I’m Not Making This Up“
  (January 11, 2021)

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¹ A well-established art show, a few drugs, and labels:

• Wikipedia
  • Alcohol (drug)
  • Asplund Pavilion
  • Ayahuasca (“a South American psychoactive brew”)
  • Harmaline
  • LGBT
  • Moonshine
  • Pearl-clutching (a page with two notices:
    “This is an essay on the civility policy.
    It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia’s policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.”
    and
    “This page in a nutshell: Pearl-clutching is a type of civil POV pushing where an editor feigns an overreaction with a typically bad-faith invocation of WP:CIVIL.”)
  • Serotonin
  • Serotonin reuptake inhibitor
  • Tetrahydroharmine
  • Venice Biennale
  • Venice Biennale of Architecture
• “Ayahuasca / What is ayahuasca?” (“a plant-based psychedelic”)
  ADF (Alcohol and Drug Foundation)
• Drugs (psychoactive)
  Health topics, World Health Organization
• LGBTIQA+ glossary of common terms
  Australian Institute of Family Studies
• The OECD work on LGBTI+ inclusion
  OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
• Cambridge Dictionary
  • pearl-clutching
  • psychedelic
• pearl-clutching
  Dictionary.com
• Vatican Chapels, San Giorgio
  Universes in Universe (universes.art)
• “The ‘I’ in LGBTI stands for intersex. Here’s what it means.
  ShareAmerica.gov (June 14, 2016) (site is managed by the Bureau of Global Public Affairs within the U.S. Department of State)

² Argh! Coffee, conniptions, and me:

• Wikipedia
  • Beaufort scale
  • Caffeine
  • Cannabis (drug) (“Redirected from Marijuana”)
  • Coffee
  • Controlled Substances Act
  • Heroin (diacetylmorphine)
  • Israel-Hamas war
  • Israel-Hamas war protests on university campuses in the United States (“A request that this article title be changed to 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses is under discussion. Please do not move this article until the discussion is closed….”)
  • Legality of cannabis by U.S. jurisdiction
  • List of Schedule I drugs (US)
  • LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide)
  • MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, ecstasy, molly, mandy)
  • Reefer Madness
  • Russian invasion of Ukraine
  • Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine
  • She Shoulda Said No! (AKA Wild Weed; The Devil’s Weed; Marijuana, the Devil’s Weed; The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket)
  • Tornado outbreak of March 13-15, 2024
  • Tornado outbreak and derecho of April 1-3, 2024
  • Tornadoes of 2024
• I don’t miss “the good old days”
  • “Prescription Quest: Another Month’s Epic Saga” (September 9, 2023)
    • “Reefer Madness”, “Captain Planet”, and Perceptions
    • Scheduling Scary Substances

³ Cans of worms I won’t open today:

• Wikipedia
  • Art world
  • Creativity and mental health (flagged: “This article needs more reliable medical references for verification or relies too heavily on primary sources….”)
  • Cultural cringe
  • Dada
  • Outsider art
  • Queer (“…an umbrella term….”)
  • Surrealism
  • Yankee
• Cambridge Dictionary
  • can of worms
  • queer
• queer
  dictionary.com
• queer
  Wiktionary
• “The Artist as Outsider“
  Melvin Rader, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (March 1958) via JSTOR

⁴ Strangers and an art show:

• Wikipedia
  • Stranger
• La Biennale di Venezia (Italian)
  • “Biennale Arte 2024: Stranieri Ovunque — Foreigners Everywhere“
    News (English), La Biennale di Venezia (April 15, 2024)
• Online Etymology Dictionary
  • estrange
  • stranger (n.)

⁵ Assorted miscellania:

• Wikipedia
  • Albert Camus
  • Boston Brahmin (“This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources….”)
  • Cancel culture
  • Corita Kent (AKA Sister Mary Corita Kent)
  • Exploitation film
  • Film censorship in the United States
  • History of Boston
  • Righteous indignation (flagged “This section’s factual accuracy is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help to ensure that disputed statements are reliably sourced.” — perhaps understandably)
  • Women in prison film
• Marlowe’s “Faustus”, and more reasons I don’t miss “the good old days”
  • “Wagner, Servant of Faustus: What’s He Doing in the Play?”
    • The Bear Howse, Casinos and the “Immorality of English Stage”
    • Old-Fashioned Values

⁶ A lively era, and something from Jonathan Swift’s imagination:

• Wikipedia
  • 1960s
  • French Indochina
  • Vietnam War
  • Yahoo (Gulliver’s Travels)

⁷ A decade, an all-too-common attitude, a magazine, and a book:

• Wikipedia
  • 1960s
  • Anti-Catholicism
  • Hyperallergic (“…an online arts magazine, based in Brooklyn, New York….”)
  • Maria Monk (her book, “Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed” (1836), enjoyed lasting popularity)
  • Maurizio Cattelan
• “Gagosian Invited Curator Francesco Bonami to Create a Meditative Show About Starting Over in Beverly Hills” (includes Maurizio Cattelan’s “Father” (2021), an enlarged photo of the artist’s father’s feet)
  Artnet Gallery Network, Artnet News (May 25, 2022)

⁸ A contemporary art studio:

• Wikipedia
  • Claire Fontaine (“…a feminist, conceptual artist, founded in Paris in 2004 by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill….”)

⁹ Old writings:

• Wikipedia
  • Book of Deuteronomy
  • Torah (what I call the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)
• The Book of Deuteronomy, Introduction
  New American Bible, Old Testament (via USCCB)

¹⁰ History and me, very briefly:

• “History, Viewpoints, Narratives and Ancient Rome” (July 2, 2022)
  • A Hypothetical Situation: Washington, From a 68th Century Perspective
  • Historical Narratives
• “Sifting Through the Ash Heap of History” (October 30, 2021)
  • Ancient Empires and an Apocalypse We Nearly Forgot
  • History and Human Nature
• “The Past: What We Know, What We Don’t” (March 30, 2017)
  • Wizard Oil and Linear A
  • Unanswered Questions

¹¹ Part of humanity’s long story, a small part:

• Wikipedia
  • A-list
  • Argentina
  • Colonial government in the Thirteen Colonies
  • Cristina Bergoglio
  • History of Argentina
  • History of Italy
  • History of the United States
  • Inca Empire
  • Italian Argentines
  • Juan Perón
  • Revolución Libertadora (“This article has multiple issues…”)
  • Pope Francis
  • Portacomaro
  • Spanish Empire
  • Thirteen Colonies
  • Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata