Kissing the Ring

An otherwise insignificant incident took place at an Italian shrine last week that reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite films. Pope Francis was receiving a line of visitors, one by one. It's something the Pope does routinely. But on this particular occasion something puzzling occurred: when several of the people bent down to kiss the ring on the Pope's right hand, he jerked his hand out of the way to avoid it. It was caught on video (of course) and it went viral. Why did the Pope react that way? 

The Guardian reported various takes on the strange event:

LifeSiteNews, a conservative Catholic website that often criticises the pope, called the episode “disturbing” in the headline of an article that included a long history of the rings popes wear and their significance.

Rorate Caeli, a website read by Catholic traditionalists, tweeted: “Francis, If you don’t want to be the Vicar of Christ, then get out of there!”
The papal biographer Austen Ivereigh, a supporter of Francis, countered by tweeting: “He’s making sure that they engage with him, not treat him like a sacred relic. He’s the Vicar of Christ, not a Roman emperor.”

“It’s high time kissing bishops’ rings disappears altogether. It’s just ridiculous and has nothing to do with tradition. It’s an import from monarchies. Much of the pomp around bishops should be ditched,” tweeted Russell Pollitt, a Jesuit priest.

Some Vatican watchers noted that even Francis’s predecessors Benedict, a hero to nostalgic conservatives, and John Paul II did not like having their hands kissed – at least not by long lines of people, for the sake of expediency.

One Twitter user recalled that when he visited John Paul with a group of 50 people they were told specifically not to kneel or kiss the papal hand.

The Vatican did not say why Francis was so insistent on not having the ring – a simple silver one with a cross – kissed in the long receiving line.

“Sometimes he likes it, sometimes he does not. It’s really as simple as that,” said a close aide to the pope who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The aide added he was “amused” by all the reaction.

In the Fellini film Il Bidone I reviewed a few weeks ago, there is a scene in which Broderick Crawford, playing a con artist named Augusto, is disguised as a Catholic Monsignor, about to wrap up an elaborate scam in which he and his accomplices convince a poor farmer to cough up his life savings in exchange for a chest full of fake treasure. Before he leaves, however, the farmer's wife asks Augusto to come and see her young daughter, crippled by polio. I wrote about the scene: "Dumbstruck by her terrifying goodness, Augusto wants to escape, but when he turns to go, the girl reaches for her crutches and pursues him, at last clutching his hand to kiss his ring. "Pray for me," she tells him. Filled with self-revulsion, he pulls his hand away from her and flees." 

"You don't need me," he says to her. "And I have nothing to give you."Augusto, in a sudden access of guilt and overwhelming fatigue at his life as a swindler, cannot bear having that beautiful, sad child, believing in his goodness, perhaps in his power to heal, kiss his ring - a ring that is at least as bogus as he is in his disguising vestments. She reminds him of his daughter, who is also 18, and who he wants to help pay her way through college. But then he makes the mistake of trying to rob his own accomplices, who beat him and abandon him where he has fallen and, unbeknownst to them, broken his back.

But the video! The Pope repeats the scene from Il Bidone, but over and over. Was he feeling, by any chance, slightly unworthy that day?