UNITED KINGDOM
The Observer
Julian Coman
The Observer, Saturday 8 March 2014
On St Valentine’s Day last month, after days of rain, Rome suddenly found itself bathed in warm sunshine. The canopy of cloudless blue materialised just in time, because in St Peter’s Square around 10,000 engaged couples, from 40 countries, were gathering to receive papal blessings.
As with any event that involves Pope Francis, the level of interest outstripped all expectations. This, after all, is a pope enjoying his own extended honeymoon period. Intended for the cavernous Pope Paul VI auditorium, the first-ever festa dei fidanzati, or lovers’ party, had to be transferred to the biggest Catholic stage of all.
There might have been a downpour, but of course there wasn’t. As usual, in the first 12 months of what is turning out to be a game-changing papacy, things worked out brilliantly. “It was so great for us to be here,” said Lucia Huang, who will marry her fiancé, Antony Lai, this December. The couple had travelled 6,000 miles from Taipei to be there. “In Taiwan this pope is a hero,” added Lucia. “We know all about his small car and the way he lives.” …
What on earth is going on? A year ago the Catholic church was arguably at its lowest ebb since the Reformation. The shy, intellectual and conservative Benedict XVI had just astonished the world by retiring in exhaustion, the first pope to retire since Gregory XII in 1415. There was outrage at ongoing sex abuse scandals and associated cover-ups – Cardinal Keith O’Brien had just resigned his position after an Observer exposé of his sexual misconduct. Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, had leaked private documents from Benedict’s personal desk in an attempt to expose corruption within the Roman Curia. The Vatican bank was under investigation over money laundering. Amid the chaos, pews in Europe and the United States were emptying as parishioners, appalled at revelations of paedophile priests, joined those alienated by an aloof church’s obsession with issues of sexual morality.
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