[ANALYSIS] Pope Francis and the end of an era

To someone like myself - a complete stranger to the often-Byzantine ways of the Vatican, who suffers from an incurable allergy to pomp and ceremony to boot - the experience of a lightning visit to the Holy See (complete with the Holy Sight of Pope Francis I himself) was... illuminating, to say the least.

Not in any spiritual sense, perhaps - I'm a little too old and too cynical for all that, I'm afraid - but the entire experience did open my eyes to the sheer enormity of the task now facing this humble (and decidedly reluctant) pontiff from Argentina.

It is not just a case of rolling back a few archaic practices here and there, of dusting off a few cobwebs and attempting to 'modernise' the structures of a much-criticised institution which is still arguably very firmly stuck in the past.

On the contrary, it is more like overseeing the long, slow and tortuous death of a millennial tradition that now knows it must radically change or perish in the attempt.

Yet things are inevitably slow to change, in a city state whose entire political identity - enshrined by the largely ceremonial Lateran Treaty of 1929 - is itself very clearly a thing of the past.

And the moment you step past the Vatican's public front garden - that is, the enormous esplanade of Piazza San Pietro, with its beggars and street vendors, its priests and pigeons and, above all, its gaggles upon gaggles of American tourists (honestly, you'd think the entire population of the USA had simply emptied itself out onto Viale del Conciliazione) - into the sombre solitude of Cortile San Damaso beyond, it is almost as though you've just slipped back a good few centuries through an unseen chink in the fabric of time and space, and left the real world behind.

There is more to this sensation than the mere sight of those absurdly festooned Swiss Guards with their pikestaffs flashing sporadically in the sun. Every aspect of the place seems just as otherworldly, almost suffocated by the unspoken sense of ritual and regimentation that seems to underscore all activity therein.

People (mostly cardinals) glide past you in slow motion, their red sashes swaying in their wake... and all their movements seem choreographed, stylised, almost as if fearful of breaching some obscure pontifical protocol which no one can properly explain.

Enter the palace itself, and the sheer opulence of everything that meets your gaze is so... unreasonable that you honestly get the impression that it just can't actually be real. Yet there we were, an unlikely assortment of Maltese journalists, being walked (or rather, frog-marched) from one impossibly ornate chamber to another, by security staff who might have been extras from 'Inglourious Basterds' - past gilded thrones, brocaded tapestries, all manner of artefact and relic encased in gold and glass - and frowned upon every step of the way by 15th-century frescoes of the school of Raphael: mostly nymphs, cherubs and bearded old patriarchs, whose eyes follow your every step with undisguised suspicion and contempt.

Incidentally, there is no part of the entire palace that is not watched over by some painted or sculpted manifestation of divinity or another, as if to remind you that your every innermost thought, like your every bodily movement or function, is as plainly visible to the Good Lord as the pages of that ancient manuscript you yourself just paused to admire in the corner.

Suddenly, the sensation one gets is that 'rolling back' this monumental illusion is a good deal easier said than done. There is simply too much to roll back. If you'll forgive the cliché, it is almost like a house of cards: so much has since been built on these same millennial foundations that there is now a genuine fear - almost visible in the faces of the palace staff - that one false move by the already 'controversial' Pope Francis I could quite literally bring the entire edifice crumbling down about their ears.

And perhaps that is precisely his intention. Just the day before our arrival in the Immortal City, Pope Francis I had made headlines by refusing to attend a concert in his honour. As a result, the image of an empty pontifical throne graced the front pages of newspapers across the world; and a profoundly powerful visual image it was too, emphasising the unmistakable message that the age when popes attend such lavish and utterly meaningless events (instead of attending to God's more important work elsewhere) is now firmly OVER.

Francis in Wonderland

Back in the corridors of the Episcopal Palace, we are treated to yet another reminder of the curiously surreal double reality this man, this pope, now finds himself having to live through every day.

The Maltese government delegation has by this time arrived: Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his entourage are walked slo-o-o-owly through the same corridors and under the same frescoes... And no sooner does this solemn procession pass us by than a little and hitherto unseen door opens in a panel of the wall beyond, and in an instant we are rushed (I mean that literally, as in, made to RUN) through a tiny secret passage, also full of grim-faced saints and martyrs, to emerge in a small waiting room giving onto the chamber where Muscat is now being received by His Holiness.

The entire episode could have been a cast-out scene from 'Through the Looking Glass'. I honestly don't think any of us would have batted an eyelid if one of the palace guards suddenly transformed before our eyes into a frog (or fish) in court livery.

And yet, all this decidedly surreal build-up to our fleeting rendez-vous with Pope Francis only reinforces how very ordinary and unremarkable the former bishop of Buenos Aires really turns out to be. Like all my colleagues I went to the Vatican with my own preconceived notions of the man - and unlike a few of my colleagues, I harboured the vaguest of suspicions that his celebrated humility and all the accompanying anecdotes to 'prove' it (Pope Francis giving up his seat for an invalid, Pope Francis forgoing all the luxuries of the papacy, etc.) were nothing more than ingenious little marketing ploys to redeem the Church's ailing image in the world.

Yet there he stood, at the end of so many corridors full of so much wonder and enchantment, every inch the 'ordinary' bloke he is so often portrayed to be. Paradoxically, it fell to Dr Emmy Bezzina - an outspoken Church critic if there ever was one, and arguably the only one of our party to have tasted the unfairness of the 1993 Church-State concordat in person - to size him up best as we compared notes afterwards: "You can tell just by looking at him that this is not his environment".

And having just looked at the man myself - nay, having minutely studied his demeanour and his facial expressions at very close quarters in the seven to eight minutes we spent in his presence in that chamber - I can confirm that Emmy was absolutely right. Palatial residences and untold works of art simply do not suit this man one tiny bit... and he knows it.

So when I finally got to meet Pope Francis I in person, the pair of eyes I found myself looking into clearly belonged to a man who was fully conscious - apologetic, almost - of being out of place. It was in fact difficult to escape the notion that Pope Francis was quite simply embarrassed to be seen surrounded by so much obscene wealth; and that, given half a chance, he would not hesitate to do what his namesake did to his father's merchandise 900 years ago - not to mention what Jesus Christ did in the Temple of Jerusalem around 1,000 years before that... and simply hurl all the Vatican's riches out of the nearest palace window.

More than just a concordat...

Viewed from this perspective, even the relatively 'trivial' affair that brought a delegation of the Maltese government knocking at his heavenly door in the first place - namely, an electoral promise to revise the 1993 Church-State agreement regarding marriage - can likewise be seen as a small but significant note in a much larger and more complex symphonic movement that is slowly unfolding in the background.

It is not just the pomp and ceremony of papal existence that comes across a throwback to a forgotten age. Even the Vatican's own presumption of statehood - as emblemised by the many concordats and treaties that still bind so many countries to its iron will, of which ours is but one tiny little drop in an ocean of international protocol - is now in the process of being 'revised', toned down and generally phased out.

It is as though Pope Francis is actually overseeing the gradual winding-down of a millennial institution that can simply no longer keep up the pretence of timelessness: trying to drag the entire shebang kicking and screaming into the 21st century, even if he secretly knows (as do his cardinals and as did his immediate predecessor) that not much of the Catholic Church in its present form can actually survive the transition.

Personally, I suspect that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat also formed a similar impression from his own private colloquy with both Pope Francis and Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state.

He, too, emerged from that meeting to announce that the 1993 Church-State agreement was "outdated", and while he strove to reassure the press that "Malta's historical ties with the Vatican will continue to be nurtured and respected" - or words to that effect, anyway - he could not disguise the fact that the nature of the relationship between the two States has undeniably changed beyond recognition in recent years.

Like the same pomp and ceremony that Pope Francis has taken so many steps to reverse, the archaic idea of Malta as a satellite of the Vatican (once encapsulated in that resounding slogan 'Malta Cattolicissima') is likewise well past its sell-by date. With the advent of divorce in 2011 - and more pertinently the outright rejection by the electorate of an unspoken Church decree to vote 'No' in that referendum - Malta now has to revisit more than just an anachronistic treaty with the Vatican.

Its own perceived identity as a quintessentially Catholic country which obeys its bishops in all things has likewise been thrown into deep crisis. Muscat's government has already taken steps to bury this perception once and for all: for instance, by appointing a Maltese Muslim onto a government board to promote interfaith dialogue, in recognition of the 'new' identity of Malta as a pluralist state.

The next step will be to jettison an absurd state of affairs that grants Ecclesiastical Tribunals (answerable to Canon, not Maltese, law) automatic precedence over the civil courts. After that, civil partnerships will be introduced for same-sex couples, in direct defiance of Church teaching.

And the next step after that? Hard to say, although I found it significant that Joseph Muscat would go out of his way to 'assure' Pope Francis that Malta's abortion policy will remain unchanged... perhaps in reply to an unspoken fear that even this last bastion of Malta's subservience to Catholic thinking will erode in future.