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Catholic believers are revolting, tourists are taking "selfies" with Pope Francis in the coffin

2025-04-24 20:36:27 / BOTA ALFA PRESS

Catholic believers are revolting, tourists are taking "selfies" with

An unusual phenomenon is occurring at Pope Francis' farewell ceremony.

Hundreds of thousands of tourists have gathered to bid the Holy Father farewell, but many of them, as they approach the archdiocese, do not hesitate to take out their phones and take "selfies" with him.

This gesture has outraged many other believers, who see it as a lack of respect and a lack of trust from people who put their "online" existence before such spiritual events.

"The fact that many believers, after waiting hours in line, arrive in front of the body of Pope Francis filming it with their smartphones can be explained on the one hand by the increasingly superficial satisfaction of emotions and on the other by the search for consensus, the need for approval and popularity, given by the opportunity to tell others 'I am here'."

This is what Daniela Villani, associate professor at the Catholic University of Milan in General Psychology, coordinator of the Research Unit in Digital Media, Psychology and Well-being, and professor of the psychology of religion, says, reflecting on the phenomenon that many believers are experiencing in these days of farewell to the Pope.

“When a person films himself in these circumstances “it is as if he wanted to say 'I am here, I show it and I become popular. But – asks Villani – where was I? Did I experience an emotion?” Passing so quickly in front of the Pope's body “and filming that moment does not allow for a deep processing of what you feel and feel when you are there.

This attitude, she notes, is protective from a psychological perspective: it has become a way for people to enjoy in such a superficial way the experiences they live without actually being there. To touch with one's hand a moment of mourning, loss, farewell is in any case to confront the pain and finitude of human life. It means to connect with a part of oneself that raises not insignificant existential questions.

To put it another way, "I do not participate in a deep way, but I establish a distance, slightly emptying the sense of my participation. This does not mean that those who took a selfie, or filmed themselves, did not come full of desire to participate. But this seems to me like a gesture that greatly distorts the meaning of an experience like that of being present in that place," concludes the psychologist.

 

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