Looking at the fireplace

With an abundance of images served from the crane camera, cruising the heights of the Sistine Chapel, now searching for Michelangelo's bearded God touching Adam with his finger, now descending to the imperturbable halberdiers of the Swiss Guard formed on the soft, single red marble.Vatican Mediahas transmitted the silent wait until four thirty in the afternoon sharp, when the cardinals, entrusting themselves to all the saints in a hypnotic litanyearly pro nobis,They entered the Sistine Chapel in procession. Awareness of 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 close-up from home. Television networks, eager for a storyline with plot twists and endings, are fascinated to be able to broadcast an event in a language no longer spoken, starring only men (I counted only two women, leaving the Sistine Chapel), who elect the leader of a church in a time of so many heads, so many hats, and watchful seagulls. The stakes are high in this afternoon of impeccable spiritual staging, laden with earthly, ideological, political, and economic implications, but Rome has done it again: stay tuned to your screens.