Typically, the usual way we talk about the internal differences among Catholics is in terms of left v. right, liberals against conservatives.
Although those terms are inexact and often misleading when applied to religious groups, there’s no denying they do capture something.
However, they’re hardly the only way of slicing the Catholic pie, and a recent ferment in Rome over a “Superpope” T-shirt neatly captures two others:
- How nervous does a Catholic get when the Church, or one of its leaders, seems popular in the outside world?
Some find such acclaim exciting, seeing it as creating a powerful missionary moment, while others fret that it risks prioritizing a desire for approval over courage in proclaiming truths people don’t always want to hear.
- How comfortable is a given Catholic blending faith with commerce – that is, doing good while also turning a profit?
Many would echo the sentiment of the late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, onetime president of the Vatican bank, who famously said, “You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys alone.”
Others, however, instinctively fear the corrupting power of money, especially when lust for it is hidden under a blanket of good intentions.
In brief, here’s the story of the Superpope.
An early moment when Pope Francis’s status was cemented as a pop culture sensation came on a cold Roman night in January 2014, when a street artist named Mauro Pallotta (better known as “MauPal” in the art world), painted an image of the pontiff on a wall along a much-traveled street called the Borgo Pio.
It showed Francis as a superhero, flying into the sky with a curled fist in one hand and a bag of Christian values (not to mention the scarf of his favorite Argentine soccer team, San Lorenzo) in the other.
Within 48 hours, Roman authorities had scrubbed the image off the wall, but by that point the horse was out of the barn.
The “Superpope” image had gone viral, with even the Vatican’s newly created Secretariat for Communications getting in on the act by tweeting out Pallotta’s image. Continue reading
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