A church losing out to secularism, a shaky Mayor aiming at a second term and a controversial transport company. What have these things in common? An evangelization strategy burdening a badly strapped-for-cash municipality, namely Rome.
On the occasion of Pope Francis’s inauguration, on Tuesday March 19th, Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, decided, in agreement with the Prefect and the Police Commissioner, to allow free travel on the underground system from 5:30 am to 2:00 pm, tapping into the Prime Minister’s funds. The declared purpose was to mitigate any inconvenience to regular traffic and to implement safety. On the same day, city buses were decorated with Vatican City flags fluttering next to the Rome Capital logo. Even screens in the underground and bus stations recurrently broadcast an ad with the message “Let’s welcome Rome’s bishop”.
ATAC, the Roman public transport company, decided to print a million tickets with the pope’s effigy. Its CEO, Roberto Diacetti, is really satisfied with the initiative, which “ideally follows in the wake of what we did for John Paul II’s beatification”. “We thank the Vicariate for accepting our offer”, he adds, “and we hope to identify new, equally satisfying forms of collaboration in the future”. The love affair between Roman institutions and the church seems to endure, with the tendency of the former to bow down to the Vatican.
These are the priorities of a company affected, among other things, by severe management issues, and facing corruption allegations soon to involve Alemanno himself. In a huge city with an inadequate transport network and widespread malfunctions, Atac is concealing problems behind such swaggering, capitalising on the pope’s smiley face.
This is yet another untimely initiative, exposing an institution’s partiality for religion, paid for with public money, it goes without saying. Secularists like us can decry the matter and manifest our disagreement, but we are not allowed any further action. The Mayor, for the recently concluded conclave, asked 4.5 million Euros to Mario Monti’s government. With new elections coming up in May, and an unlikely reconfirmation to a second term, the Mayor seems to be turning more actively to the Vatican to get support against his stronger opponents, in particular the candidates of the Democratic Party (PD) e and the 5 Star Movement (M5S, the “Grillini”).
As a conservative and a traditionalist, mayor Alemanno has never made a secret of his penchant for the most backward factions of Catholicism. Last May he even went as far as giving his patronage to a no-choice rally of anti-abortion fundamentalists, showing up personally with his mayoral sash. He is often seen at events organised in collaboration with the Church, even when these are explicitly aimed at promoting evangelization (a recent one was called “Ten Commandments in the square”).
It really seems that, with a post-fascist Mayor, Rome is back to the pomp of Mussolini’s Conciliation treaties. The balance of Alemanno’s five-year administration is almost entirely made of shadows, but in the Holy Palaces this is not something to worry about: if their light is the only one to shine, all the better.