Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam, an excellent, subtle and at times humorous film about a freshly elected pope – named Melville ma foi! – who undergoes a nervous breakdown and refuses to step up to power raises questions about the viability of an archaic yet still forceful institution, so seeped in pomp, ritual and conservatism that it is losing its connection to the spiritual needs, challenges and desires of today’s brethren (believers or not.) This is a film about breakdowns, failures of communication and love to make amends, of rituals gone rigid, of the individual refusing to sacrifice himself to the machine, even for a so-called common good, and it is tinged with melancholy and subversive comedy. I am a Moretti fan and this is Nanni at his best, I believe. Go see this film if you can.
But apart from being a fine, very singular work of cinema, Habemus Papam had quite an unexpected impact on me. I left the MK2 movie theatre weirdly inspired, my pulse quickening as we walked toward Chez Mazig along the canal for après cinema tapas. It took me a moment to understand that some dormant desire had been nudged from its hibernation, an adolescent dream, in fact, an aspiration I have long kept in a closet back home along with the lackluster high school year books and my essays from Sister Mary Barbara’s Honors English (including one entitled “Frailty, Thy Name Is Nun” about Ophelia’s denied potential in Hamlet).
I once aspired, my friends, to be the Pope. Yes, the Pope! Il Papa!
(Portait of a Pope by Blaise Marietan, 8 years old)
The First Woman Pope, or should I say, the second? I and all other women of the papal persuasion are preceded, it seems, by the legendary Joan. According to The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, (an extraordinary volume penned in a feminist frenzy by the goodly Barbara G. Walker), though the Church now denies Pope Joan’s existence, her portrait once figured in a row of papal busts in Siena Cathedral labeled Johannes VIII, femina ex Anglia.” Pope Joan, you see, was an Englishwoman. She reigned as pope for “two years, five months and four days.” According to The Women’s Encyclopedia, she “knew of more scriptures than any man and was elected pope by disguising herself in men’s clothes.” Sadly, she fell, in the way women have since antediluvian times: she “conceived by one of her servants” and when in the throes of labor pains was “dragged into the street and stoned to death.” What can I add but that the world is cruel and was not ready for the likes of exegetical Joan in A.D. 855.
(One of Beastie Boy’s favourite books…)
But times are a-changing and breakdowns pave the way to rebirths.
Get ready, St. Pete’s, I’m coming in for a clean up job. My broom’s a-beaming. Up and away!
Why do I want to be pope? Well, who wouldn’t want to conduct their business meetings in the Sistine Chapel? Listen, I am not a political animal, nor am I a power broker, but I am from a long line of shepherds so I must, on some instinctual level, know how to lead a flock. That might not be enough but I can always work hard, very hard at the rest. It’s an unfortunate fact that women must labor much more fervently than men to accede to traditionally male-held functions. I, then, will put my nose to the grindstone; I will start attending mass for starters and offer my services as a deaconess (do these exist?), administering communion and such in parishes with part-time padres. I will…
Listen, I’ll admit I have no idea how I’ll get to from point A to point B in this matter, and that points C and D are, for the moment, beyond the scope of my imagination, but the ambition remains and there must be a way make this lofty ascension to papesshood.
I’ve got some good ideas on my papal agenda. For one, a major, ground-shaking apology to all Women, Jews, Muslims, Cathars, Blacks, Gypsies, Madmen and Cats for that blight on humanity which was the Inquisition, those 500 years of institutionalized evil, of torture wreaked on innocents. John-Paul II, to his credit, did issue an apology of sorts, but he forgot to mention retribution, which, seeing he’s a man of the frock and versed in penance-issuing, is a mighty suspicious oversight. If I were the Pope I’d have a good look at those accounts in Switzerland and liquidate what would be necessary to compensate the descendents of the victims. I am certain the Mormons would find me find them. As for compensating the cats, well, that’s a bit tricky but maybe a deal could be struck with Purina or the Bumble Bee Tuna corporation.
Then I’d attend to the nuts and bolts of the business. Bans on priests marrying and women becoming priests would be swiftly lifted and replaced with a ban on discriminations of all kinds. Birth control would get the green light. I’d have the Popemobile painted pink and black like the underside of a cancan skirt and ask Sarah Burton to design a new set of magenta mozzettas… and put a three-inch heel on those ruby red slippers while she’s at it. It does occur to me to shorten the length of the cassock but whether by two inches above or below the knee, I have not yet decided; in the event the robes go mini, I will have to reflect on stocking options, of course. Ribbed? Lace-top? Thigh high? Fishnet? All in due time.
But most importantly, for we must not to get too caught up in form at the expense of the creative impulse to embrace and love all humanity, I would like to see the Vatican become as it once was, a grandiose patron of the arts. No, on second thought, I’d like to make a more daring and dangerous proposition: May the pope be an artist. An artiste-femme.
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets mentions a curious Vatican custom that seems to point to the veracity of Joan’s papal moment. Barbara Walker writes: “Candidates had to seat themselves naked on an open stool, to be viewed through a hole in the floor by cardinals in the room below. The committee had to make its official announcement: Testiculos habet et bene pendentes, ‘he has testicles and they hang all right’”. I think we have had a long, rich and rotten history of bene pendentes; let us no longer put our trust in what hangs, but rather in what holds.
Please, dear friends, vote for me.