A secular city turns its eye on the Vatican

When the bell of St. Peter’s pealed this week, announcing that a pope had been chosen, thousands of Romans ran from their homes and offices. There was a new king, and as if they had traveled back to a time before CNN, the citizens of this ancient city wanted to get the first look at the man who would rule across the river.

All of a sudden the streets felt like Pamplona during the running of the bulls. People dodged oncoming cars and cut through alleys. Motorbikes jumped curbs onto sidewalks to get around traffic. And on the busy Via del Corso, shopkeepers fled their stores, leaving no one in charge.

It is believed that the throng in immense St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City exploded from 15,000 to 50,000 in less than 30 minutes. Later, while talking to reporters, several cardinals, their cellphones chirping in the pockets of their robes, would point to the rush of humanity as proof that the faithful had been irresistibly drawn to the church at a turning point in history.

But it was as much curiosity that pulled them there as an affirmation of belief. The Italians surely enjoy following the action at the Vatican, but they are not particularly religious. They come to watch, not to worship, the spiritual equivalent of lookie-loos who check out the newest house on the market but have no intention of buying.

Many had tracked the race for the pope the way they would the Tour de France. When the daily newspaper La Repubblica ran photographs of all 115 cardinals who were up for the job, people saved the pages so they could recognize the man who stepped out on the balcony.

In fact, German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected pope, is a de facto Roman, having worked and lived here for 24 years as head of a key church office. His desire to be pope was so widely known that mischievous locals modified for him the Roman proverb much repeated this week: “He who goes into the conclave a pope comes out a cardinal.” Ratzinger, it was said, went in a pope and came out a pope.

“Tuesday night was like a finale of a [soccer] championship,” says Jacaranda Falck, who lives with her family in an apartment with a view of Vatican City, across the Tiber River. Her husband, Fabio Borghese, scooped up two of their three children, threw them on the back of his motorbike and raced to the square. Six-year-old Sofia stood atop a garbage can to see over the crowd. When it became evident that the man on the balcony clasping his hands together in what looked like a victory gesture was Ratzinger, Sofia cried out: “It’s the German one! It’s the German. I was right!”

Sofia’s family is not unlike the city itself, inextricably descended from the church but hardly a child of it. The family tree includes a pope who put the finishing touches on St. Peter’s, a cardinal who amassed one of Europe’s greatest art collections, and one of Italy’s two patron saints. But the modern clan rarely attends Sunday Mass, preferring to spend busy weekends at the country house.

If the Borgheses cross the Tiber into the Roman Catholic headquarters, it’s to buy special skin creams at the exclusive Vatican pharmacy or to see the family name etched into the marble walls of the basilica. Sometimes, on a day off from school, Falck will take the children to see a Caravaggio tucked into one of the many domed churches in the Roman hills.

“Certainly, it’s part of life in Rome to see priests and cardinals walking around in their robes,” says Falck. “But the Vatican just exists like a strange, secluded place with all sorts of secrets. It’s a pride for us, but like a lost dream.”

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Intertwined identities

It is difficult to separate Rome’s identity from the Vatican’s. Yet Romans relate to it the way Washingtonians do the White House or New Yorkers the United Nations or even Angelenos the Pacific Ocean: After a while they cruise past without a second thought.

Indeed, for a long time now, the tie between the city and the church has been a bit awkward, if not anachronistic.

The 110 acres of Vatican City are the last remnant of the Papal States, a vast swath of territories acquired over centuries and ruled by the pope. After the unification of Italy in 1870, the new government confiscated the last of the church’s land, and for the next 50 years popes stayed inside the walls on Vatican Hill like self-imposed prisoners. In return for sovereignty, the papacy finally agreed to give up its land.

It wasn’t until John Paul II rose to prominence, globalized his cardinals and showed his influence outside Krakow that being pope was perceived by an increasingly secularized city as a big job. But when it came to John Paul II, even Romans were impressed; they came to see their pontiff as more than another doddering figure with a big domed pad in the center of town.

Francesca Monforte, who works in a shop on Via del Corso, became an admirer of John Paul II after seeing him in a football stadium in Sicily, where she was born. “I am not a strong Catholic,” says Monforte, 27, “but I was very attached to this last pope because of the good relationship he had with young people.”

Still, although she has lived in Rome for several years, she has never been inside the Vatican.

The same is true of Monica Di Biase, 32, who works nearby selling watches. She is originally from Eboli, a little town close to Naples. She grew up with the dream of moving to Rome so she could attend Mass at St. Peter’s every Sunday.

But she has lived in the Italian capital for 15 years and has never set foot inside Vatican City. “It is really hard to get there, especially on Sundays for Mass, plus it is the only day I have off to rest,” she says.

Cristiano Vaccaro, 33, who works at yet another clothing shop, has spent his whole life here but also has never been on his own to the Vatican. He’d love to go inside the Vatican’s ancient walls now, but only because cigarettes and clothes are cheaper. “I have not been inside a church in centuries,” he jokes.

Unlike others who have turned up frequently in St. Peter’s Square since John Paul II’s death, Vaccaro didn’t bother to make the scene. And it has been a scene, with Romans regularly stopping by on their way home from work to socialize, flirt and bet on the outcome of the conclave alongside the legions of reporters and pilgrims. One evening the president of an Italian bank even showed up with four bodyguards and glad-handed his way through the crowd.

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Benedict, bishop of Rome

Vaccaro, Di Biase and Monforte are just the kind of distracted and disaffected Catholics whom Pope Benedict XVI has said he wants to reach. Since his new title also makes him bishop of Rome and its 333 parishes, they are now in his diocese. The pope even told his cardinals that he decided to take the name of the patron saint of Europe in part to signal his desire to grow the church in his own backyard.

But infusing a Ratzinger brand of uncompromising Catholicism into this city is going to be a tough task, because as much as the Vatican shapes the culture of Rome, the texture and outlook of Rome are woven into the Holy See.

Father Thomas Reese, a Jesuit and editor of America magazine who has written frequently about Catholic life and the Vatican, recalls a Sunday several years ago when he was at a Mass in suburban Rome where John Paul II was presiding. At the time, Catholics in America were tussling with the church’s hierarchy about allowing girls to serve on the altar.

“At the Mass that Sunday I suddenly see an altar boy with a rather long ponytail,” says Reese. In fact, it was a girl. Which only goes to show that the Roman way is to agree when the pope says something, and then do whatever you want -- right under his nose.

People from all over the world come to serve in the Vatican, and even though they receive privileges and protection from the religious state, they, too, become part of the city. Even if it means just tying the ropes around their tunics more deftly, they start dressing better.

“Cardinals, if they are so inclined, are invited into the homes of regular Romans for dinner and to socialize,” says Francesco Valsecchi, a prominent attorney here who serves on the board of the Italian postal service. He has met a couple of cardinals from South America, he says, and “these people are no different from us.” However, it is critical to such friendships that they keep to safe topics.

“There are a lot of conventions between the Vatican and my government,” Valsecchi says. “We pick up their garbage. Our police directed the crowds this week.”

But it’s really not like the old days, he adds. “We know each other. But there is also a distance.”

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Special correspondent Camilla Lai in Rome contributed to this report.