A figure of Mary is pictured in the Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
Photo: CNS Art teacher defends Vatican’s much-maligned nativity scene
Since it was unveiled last Friday, the Vatican’s nativity scene in St Peter’s Square has elicited diverse reactions on social media, many of them strongly negative.
“So the Vatican presepe has been unveiled….turns out 2020 could get worse…” wrote art historian Elizabeth Lev in a post that went viral on Twitter. Presepe is the word for manger scene in Italian.
But Marcello Mancini, a teacher at the art institute where the ceramic nativity set was made, defended it, telling CNA that “many [art] critics have appreciated this work” over the years.
“I’m sorry about the reactions, that people don’t like it,” he said, emphasising that “it is a nativity scene that must be framed in the historical period in which it was produced.”
This year’s nativity comes from the region of Abruzzo. The 19 ceramic figures, which include the Virgin Mary, St Joseph, the Christ Child, an angel, the three Magi, and many animals, come from a set consisting of 54 pieces made over the course of a decade in the 1960s and 1970s.
Pope Francis celebrates 51 years of priesthood
Fifty-one years ago, on 13 December 1969; and just a few days before his thirty-third birthday, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was ordained to the priesthood.
Eleven years earlier, on 11 March 1958, he had entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus where, less than four years after his ordination, he made his perpetual profession on 22 April 1973.
The future Pope discovered his vocation in 1953, on 21 September – the liturgical commemoration of St Matthew. On that day, the 17-year-old Jorge Bergoglio, passing by the parish he normally attended in Buenos Aires, felt the need to go to confession. He found a priest he did not know, and that confession changed his life.
“For me this was an experience of encounter,” Pope Francis later recounted. Speaking at the Pentecost Vigil on 18 May 2013, the Pope said of that long-ago visit to the church, “I found that someone was waiting for me. Yet I do not know what happened, I can’t remember, I do not know why that particular priest was there whom I did not know, or why I felt this desire to confess, but the truth is that someone was waiting for me. He had been waiting for me for some time. After making my confession I felt something had changed. I was not the same. I had heard something like a voice, or a call. I was convinced that I should become a priest.”
Vatican City to start coronavirus vaccinations in January
Vatican City will begin to offer coronavirus vaccinations in January, according to the Vatican director of health and hygiene.
“We believe it is very important that even in our small community a vaccination campaign against the virus responsible for Covid-19 is started as soon as possible,” Dr Andrea Arcangeli, head of the Vatican health service, told Vatican News.
“In fact, only through widespread and widespread immunisation of the population can real benefits in terms of public health be obtained to gain control of the pandemic.”
The Pfizer vaccine is expected to be made available to Vatican City residents, employees and their family members over the age of 18 in the first months of 2021.