Looking at the fireplace

With an abundance of images served from the crane camera, crossing the heights of the Sistine Chapel, now looking for Michelangelo's bearded God touching Adam with his finger, now going down to the imperturbable halberdiers of the Swiss Guard forming on the shining marble with the one and a Media has transmitted the silent wait until four thirty in the afternoon sharp, when the cardinals, commending themselves to all the saints in a hypnotic litanyearly pro nobis,They have entered the Sistine Chapel in procession. They have invoked intelligence, truth and peace, and have sworn on theGospel according to Saint Matthew –opened for Sunday, which reads: "While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew [...]. Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men"– proceed in good conscience to the election of a new pope. And then, everyone out.

The image has shifted to the street, to the people waiting in Sant Pere Square. Once again, technology has allied itself with tradition, with liturgy, and the sacred has been seen in the foreground from home. The crowd (just leaving the Sistine Chapel) is choosing the head of a Church in a time of so many heads, so many hats, and in which the news will come out of a chimney on a rooftop with watchful seagulls. Much is at stake in this afternoon of impeccable spiritual staging, loaded with earthly, ideological implications, attentive to their screens.