Like Queen Victoria, Pope Francis in Bolivia was not amused. On that the media were agreed. But if, after Bolivian President Morales had presented him with a crucifix superimposed on a hammer and sickle, they agreed about what he was not, they disagreed about what he was.
The prudent said that he simply received the crucifix, the wary declared him apparently not amused, the Vatican went a letter further into the alphabet to describe him as bemused, others raised the emotional charge to find him surprised, put on the spot, and angered.
One went out on a limb to assert that he rebuked President Morales for embarrassing him with this melange of Communist and Christian symbols. Whatever of the Pope’s feelings, some Bishops used social media to denounce Morales for arrogantly conflating faith and ideology.
As the story developed, discussion turned to what the Pope had said to Morales (inaudible on the tape), and whether the hammer and sickle were intended as a Communist symbol at all.
President Morales explained, and the Vatican spokesperson agreed, that the design of the crucifix came from Jesuit Luís Espinal who was captured, tortured and killed by right-wing paramilitaries in 1980. On his visit, Pope Francis had stopped to pray at the place where he was killed and had praised his faith and courage. Espinal designed the cross to show Christ close to workers and to peasants.
The story quickly died in a snow flurry at the close of the news cycle. But for those of us for whom the crucifix is a sacred symbol, it invited reflection on how to respond to art that places Christian symbols in political contexts.
Those who criticised the cross given to the Pope believed that it associated Christian faith with communist ideology and the revolutionary violence it endorsed.
To make that association would be wrong, but to be consistent we would have also to deplore the practice of the Conquistadors whose chaplains held the cross aloft in battle. We would also need to reflect on the crosses on Latin American churches that share the town square with the army barracks, the police station and the town hall. The cooptation of faith and the violence Bolivia and many other Latin American nations came from national security ideology as well as from communism.
Religious art has regularly been controversial. We need only remember the outrage at Piss Christ in Melbourne some years ago. Marilyn Manson’s gun cross made of rifle and revolvers and the plethora of popular craft in which images of crosses, hand grenades and guns dangle from bracelets have also been strongly criticised.
Outrage, however should be tempered by the fact that works of art are susceptible to many interpretations. Even if the Bolivian crucifix was intended to identify Christ and communism, it can equally be taken to represent Christ crucified under communism, in the same way that the crosses on churches in town squares can be seen to represent the suffering of the faithful under the violence of the security state, and Manson’s Holy Wood to warn of the prevalent association of religiosity with violence.
Debate about what is acceptable in the combination of religious and other symbols is usually inconclusive, and perhaps should be so. But it should be kept in mind that there are two audiences for religious art. One uses crucifixes and other art primarily as aids to devotion. They know who and what the image represents and do not wish to be diverted by change and provocation. So they may be enraged, for example, by a statue of a visibly pregnant Mary because it makes them focus on the image instead of on the familiar Mary who for them lies behind it.
The second audience comprises those who expect artistic images to reveal something new and surprising. For them an image of Christ on hammer and sickle makes them see afresh the ambiguous relationship of Jesus to revolutionary movements. They will welcome the way it disturbs more conventional ways of seeing Jesus.
Both these audiences deserve respect. Conversation between them will turn most profitably to what the images represent than to how they represent it.
On his visit to Bolivia Pope Francis was more interested in the reality of a crucified people than in the image of the crucified Jesus. His apology for the evils of colonial conquest focused on people, not what benefits Spanish occupation may have brought.
I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offences of the Church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America… There was sin, a great deal of it, for which we did not ask pardon. So for this, we ask forgiveness, I ask forgiveness. But here also, where there was sin, great sin, grace abounded through the men and women who defended the rights of indigenous peoples.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.