Sunday, May 22, 2016

No One is Watching Pope Francis "Live/On Demand!" It should be in Latin!

Tuning-in to the weekly YouTube Vatican Channel Angelus I noticed a stark contrast between the tens of thousands of people (tourists) in Saint Peter's and Saint Pius' squares to listen to the weekly Angelus address of His Holiness Pope Francis and the number of views of the live/on-demand feed on the Vatican Channel: 157 as of this moment!

157 visitors from the whole world (who went to the video, no guarantee they understood Italian or listened more than a few seconds)? There are not even two hundred Italian speakers in the world who care to see and here the Pope from their pocket phones, etc. online to follow the words of our Chief Shepherd? That seems to be is a staggering failure. It compels one to ask whether the people who show up are there not for the message but for the sensation.

If he said the general address in Latin he would certainly get better ratings, though the crowds present, largely Italian speaking, would perhaps not be just as large, thought one might suspect that many of the "Roman" religious are, like the Pope Himself, not Italian at all. The Latin would have a much larger breadth.

P.S. Pope Francis' elimination of the Christian greeting: "Laudetur Jesus Christus" (in preference for the banal "buongiorno" also deprives him and everyone of the graces associated with that (no longer indulgenced, though mentioned, in the 1968 Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, 79) good work.