- Feb 5, 2002
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ROME – If, as the saying goes, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, the converse is also true: Sometimes it’s worse to be unlucky than mischievous. At least when you know you’re playing with fire, it’s no big surprise if you get burned. When you don’t even know a flame is lit, the pain can be all the more intense.
The thought comes to mind in light of a minor contretemps this week involving a Vatican cardinal, and Italian rapper, and Pope Francis’s growing Jewish problem.
The cardinal in question is 81-year-old Gianfranco Ravasi, former president of the Vatican’s erstwhile Pontifical Council for Culture, and for more than two decades now one of the most active minds within the College of Cardinals. A Biblical scholar by training and the former prefect of the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Ravasi is legendary for the breadth of his intellectual interests, ranging from the classics of antiquity to the popular fiction of today.
Thus it was that last Sunday night, Ravasi, in tandem with most of the rest of Italy, was glued to his television watching the finale of Sanremo, the country’s largest annual music festival. Near midnight, he tweeted out a few lines from the song that an Italian-born rapper of Tunisian origins named Ghali had performed, which was good enough to earn fourth place in the competition.
Continued below.
cruxnow.com
The thought comes to mind in light of a minor contretemps this week involving a Vatican cardinal, and Italian rapper, and Pope Francis’s growing Jewish problem.
The cardinal in question is 81-year-old Gianfranco Ravasi, former president of the Vatican’s erstwhile Pontifical Council for Culture, and for more than two decades now one of the most active minds within the College of Cardinals. A Biblical scholar by training and the former prefect of the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Ravasi is legendary for the breadth of his intellectual interests, ranging from the classics of antiquity to the popular fiction of today.
Thus it was that last Sunday night, Ravasi, in tandem with most of the rest of Italy, was glued to his television watching the finale of Sanremo, the country’s largest annual music festival. Near midnight, he tweeted out a few lines from the song that an Italian-born rapper of Tunisian origins named Ghali had performed, which was good enough to earn fourth place in the competition.
Continued below.
Cardinal’s shout-out to a rapper illustrates Pope’s growing Jewish problem
What Ravasi may not have realized is that after the 30-year-old rapper finished his performance, he used the opportunity to deliver a brief but explosive political statement: “Stop the genocide,” he said, referring to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
