The whole world warmly welcomes Pope Leo XIV
Cornelius Hamelberg
The whole world warmly welcomes Pope Leo XIV
Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam
Here’s the Transcript of Cardinal Robert Prevost's first speech as Pope Leo XIV
To say that I’m overjoyed would be putting it mildly.
”The typewriter is holy” ?
The first person I congratulated was Robert Feely
Some things, some events are personal, and when intimately so, in some cases, ought to be held close to the heart and all the confided contents had better be left there in secret concealment, like a holy moment, like when X “lost” his or her virginity, although even about that, for some people it’s an event to be celebrated at songtime or fictionally as I’m sure y’all heard the young Paul Simon marvelling in “ Duncan”
“A young girl in a parking lot
Was preaching to a crowd
Singing sacred songs and
Reading from the bible
Well I told her I was lost
And she told me all about the Pentecost
And I seen that girl as the road to my survival
Just later on the very same night
When I crept to her tent with a flashlight
And my long years of innocence ended
Well she took me to the woods saying
"Here comes something and it feels so good!"
And just like a dog I was befriended
I was befriended
Oh, oh, what a night
Oh what a garden of delight
Even now that sweet memory lingers
I was playing my guitar
Lying underneath the stars
Just thanking the Lord for my fingers
For my fingers”
The fact is that I had been waiting since circa 17.30 ( Stockholm time) on Day 2 of the Conclave’s election session and after merely four rounds of voting, a world record - Hallelujah approximately one hour and fifteen minutes after the white smoke came immediately, ferociously belching out of the Sistine chimney in pure ecstasy, the delightful announcement that Robert Francis Prevost a blessed American padre had been chosen to be Pope Leo XIV was very much a public event, with over 50 000 souls already gathered at St. Peter’s Square and probably at least half a billion like me, watching the glorious event on TV.
(You know, the Jews make big bones of distinction between public and private events, the Rabbis beating their chests and pontificating as they always do and as if they had been there in person, that the granting / giving of the Torah , the Ten Commandments , the constitution of Holy Israel was a very public event witnessed by 600,000 souls gathered at the foot of Mt Sinai , whereas revelations such as the Gospels, Saul /St. Paul having a vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus ,the transmission of the Quran etc cannot likewise be said to be publicly verifiable, since they were uniquely private events…)
Ah! “ the holy places where the races meet ! ”
How really thrilling that both the Holy See, the laity and the generality of Roman Catholics and other well wishers of Jesus and his mission have transcended the narrow strictures embedded in the politics of discrimination, based on notions of the race, colour and nationality of all of God’s children - the unholy coded differences between Jew and Arab, between Indians and Pakistanis, between Africans and non-Africans, Africa - the once pristine Garden of Eden being the homeland where mankind originally came from before some emigrants crossed the Mediterranean, others either by land or boat or swam across the so called Indian Ocean to arrive at Australia, and yet others, some Johnny-come-lately, who arrived a few centuries after Christopher Columbus is now busy renaming the Bay of Mexico, stealing water and trying to nationalize it by calling it “The Gulf of America” , the same dude nursing ambitions about bringing Greenland, Canada and Gaza, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf under his wings or under his belt, and is sin-cerely hoping to silence Ibrahim Traore before he kicks the bucket.
It’s extraordinary isn’t it, that the very first American Pope, also happens to be a dual- citizen - a global citizen if you like, having also “naturalised” as a citizen of Peru where he served as a missionary for nine years and must have surely come under the benign influence and inspiration of another holy Peruvian in the shape of the Blessed St Martin De Porres
Those were some of the most beautiful moments to experience in real time, live and direct, Pope Leo XIV ,talking to all of us about peace, individually and collectively, a happy fusion of the private and the public; and since (just like my Better Half) he’s at home with English, French, Spanish, Italian , in addition to Portuguese and understands German - unlike Robinson Crusoe and the Owerri wannabe orator he is truly a world missionary and the world must be looking forward to hearing him address them severally, in their own mother tongues. Ideally, how even more wonderful it would be if he was also fluent in Arabic, Yoruba and Hebrew - with regard to the latter, so that in his grave, Andrew Marvell would have to revise what he said to his coy mistress:
“And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.”
As one of the BBC’s commentators put it, since the new Pope is putting an emphasis on social justice, it’s no coincidence that he has chosen Leo as his Papal name, when you consider his most distinguished namesake Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical on the dignity of work, famously titled Rerum novarum
And what-do-you-know, like Humpty-Dumpty, Grumpy Trumpy’s reaction to the announcement that we now have an American Pope !
Of course in the name of making America great again, Trump is taking it personally, so he says “it’s a great honor” to have a moral world leader such as His Holiness the Pope, an American, hopefully speaking the language that he President Donald J.Trump himself, the Defiant Lawyers and Vince Ellison understand, about the Holy One, God, Love Human Rights, Immigration, Deportations, the Human Family
Cornelius Hamelberg
He has only been Pope for a few days and maybe too early to be talking about
Pope Leo's stance on key issues, from climate change to LGBTQ+ rights to U.S. politics