RUSSIAN WORLD A cardinal in Moscow, the power of the powerless

The fundamental concept that Zuppi insisted on when explaining his mission to the faithful in the cathedral of the Russian capital is that “unity is not achieved with power, but with service.” Echoing what Havel was saying, he showed the truth of a Church without power, which has no weapons, intentions or projects to resolve conflicts and overthrow regimes.

The peace mission of Card. Matteo Maria Zuppi in Moscow tried to inspire feelings of peace and brotherhood, in Russia and in the whole world in conflict, although it may seem ineffective, from the point of view of strategies and negotiations, to somehow resolve the situation. The fact that the trip was confirmed, despite the internal commotion caused by the “march of justice” by Prigozhin and the Wagner group, could have given rise to the assumption that Putin himself would welcome the cardinal attention, in order to appear less condemned. and isolated because of what his crazy war has caused in international relations. Instead, the Kremlin chief preferred to appear happy and smiling amid “his people of his” gathered around the tsar, hugging and kissing children on the streets of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus.

However, the location he chose for his triumphant appearance – having grown accustomed to packed Moscow stadiums, with Putin donning heavy luxury suits to cover layers of bulletproof vests – has left everyone a bit perplexed. Why in the Caucasus, and without protection, at the mercy of irrepressible and uncontrollable enthusiasms? Somehow it was a response to the traitor Prigozhin, agitator of infidel mercenaries, to point out the intrepid Dagestanis (and their Chechen relatives) as the true servants of the great Russia. And perhaps also to assure everyone that there will be no revolts of peoples or regions, as many speculate and hope, because only the Russians know how to interpret and satisfy their wishes, just as it happens with the Ukrainians and other “traditional” peoples of the empire.

The good Romano-Bolognese cardinal had to agree to meet with some obscure Kremlin official, without really being able to discuss anything, and then with Russia’s “childhood guarantor” to talk about the 20,000 kidnapped and deported Ukrainian children, of whom she is one of the main responsible. The most solemn and significant meeting took place in the luxurious residence of Patriarch Kirill, where Zuppi was accompanied at all times by the Papal Nuncio in Moscow, Giovanni D’Aniello, and one of the leading Italian specialists in Russia, prof. Adriano Rocucci. At least here the cardinal was able to show the relevance of the Catholic Church, the only one in a position to dialogue with Putin’s great religious ideologue, whom everyone else now avoids like the plague. But neither in the meeting with Kirill were there any contritions or guarantees about possible advances towards peace; at most the common commitment to “avoid a conflict of even greater dimensions” (the current one must still seem limited to Kirill, considering that he aspires to a “metaphysical” Trinitarian and otherworldly victory).

Consoling the cardinal was the Virgin of Vladimir, the “Russian Gioconda” who inspired ancient victories, before whom Zuppi knelt in the chapel of the Tretyakov Gallery, where the icon of Rublev’s Trinity was until Kirill removed it to take him to the Cathedral of the Holy Savior, from which the cardinal wisely kept his distance. Instead, he went to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the main seat of Russian Catholics, to concelebrate with the clergy and the faithful a Mass of authentic hope and testimony of peace. And here the papal messenger was finally able to speak seriously, and explain the true reason for his visit, in the homily read in Russian by the young auxiliary bishop Nikolaj Dubinin, image of the future of the Church in this country.

The fundamental concept that Zuppi insisted on is that “unity is not achieved with power, but with service.” In fact, this is precisely the goal of the Russian war and patriarchal preaching: the unity of peoples, the sobornost of Slavophile theology. It is the Russian version of “catholicity”, to the point that even in the Creed the word “catholic” was replaced by “bribery” to define the Church: one, holy, bribery and apostolic. Sobor is the council and the cathedral, and sobirat is the verb that indicates the reunifying action. The first great prince of the Third Rome, Ivan III the Great, was nicknamed precisely the sobiratel, because he had exalted Muscovy as the new Rus’, the new Kiev, the new Rome, subduing the other cities and regions, and if it was necessary also destroying them, as happened with the too free and western Novgorod. That is the title that Putin aspires to by reincorporating all neighboring peoples into the “Unitary State” or Sobornic of Soviet memory, as has already been proclaimed for Wagnerian Belarus and is sponsored for pro-Chinese Kazakhstan. It is also the ecclesiastical title to which Kirill aspires by turning the Russian Church into the new Catholic-bribery Church, and perhaps naming the Pope himself as his cardinal vicar.

Zuppi, on the other hand, affirms that the true power is that of the “powerless”, as the greatest anti-Soviet dissident, the Czech Vaclav Havel, explained in the 1970s. The future president of Prague said that this is opposed by “the impotence of the powerful”, who can repress, but do not generate anything and are incapable of creating a new world. It is the most appropriate definition to describe Putin’s twenty years of power, which has reduced to nothing the entire attempt to rebuild a new Russia after the Soviet dictatorship, but also Kirill’s thirty years of power, in which the metropolitan -oligarch, who later became patriarch, has rendered meaningless even the most spectacular religious renaissance in human history.

As Havel himself wrote, the power of the powerless comes from living in the truth, the “living without lies” proclaimed by another great Russian dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. And Zuppi has shown the truth of a Church without power, which has no weapons, intentions or projects to resolve conflicts and overthrow regimes, which for a long time has refused to flatter the powerful or be an altar boy to the rulers. Kirill’s Church has contaminated the revival of faith with a nostalgia for power, be it the “Byzantine symphony”, the “tsarist sobornost” or simple Soviet submission, to which his patriarchy already seems reduced. The kind smile of the Roman cardinal, archbishop of Bologna and Italian parish priest close to the poor, in dialogue with everyone without fear of criticism or intrigue, is the Catholic response, the true spiritual bribery, to which in reality they also turn , in his heart and in his prayers, many Russian priests and faithful.

Havel had not only criticized the communist regime, he had also prophesied the lie of post-totalitarianism, stating that “between the intentions of the post-totalitarian system and the intentions of life there is a deep abyss…While life tends by nature to pluralism, to the variety of colors, to organize and establish itself independently -it tends, ultimately, to realize its own freedom- the post-totalitarian system demands monolithism, uniformity, discipline”. The warning does not apply only to the Russians or the Americans, the Chinese or the Turks, or all those who aspire to rebuild empires: it is an effective description of the entire globalized world, of the conscience increasingly clouded by the conformism of masses. It applies to czars and patriarchs, but also to those who don’t care about politics or religion, money or guns; it applies to influencers and the influenced, automatons of a world that loses its soul in forms of artificial intelligence.

Patriarchal bribery has also been what inspired the Wagner group, now dissolved in metaphysical Belarus, and it is no coincidence that its founders made reference to the great German composer who died 140 years ago. Richard Wagner wanted to transform musical thought through his idea of ​​the Gesamtkunstwerk, the “total work of art”, a synthesis of the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts. Even the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, himself a prophet of postmodernism, considered the music of his friend Richard as the renaissance of tragic art in Europe, because it represented the greatest example of the Dionysian spirit in the history of music. Although later he changed his mind and stated that it was the expression of a decadent civilization.

In fact, the last chapter of the opera The Ring of the Nibelung is titled “The twilight of the gods.” The brothers plot the murder of Siegfried, who has placed the ring on his finger. But despite being invulnerable thanks to magic, Siegfried can be attacked from behind, where Hagen runs him through with his spear, beginning the final tragedy. The Rhine overflows, taking the ring with it, as the Kakhovka dam floods the plans for war. And the Valhalla populated by the gods is prey to a fire that destroys it, as could happen to the Kremlin, if it were not for the fact that Wagner’s tragedies have been reduced to comedies of the impotence of the powerful.