WITHAdmittedly, it takes some getting used to on a political talk show: after advertising for perfume and pet food, for men’s shampoo and detergent for delicates, for surprise eggs made of chocolate and cars with hybrid drives, comes the pope.
This is what happened on Sunday evening with “Che Tempo che fa” (roughly: “How the weather plays”) on Rai 3. The host of the current weekly talk, which combines hard politics with soft entertainment, which often lasts more than three hours, has been since 2003 Fabio Fazio. Fazio, 57 years old and at the same time ageless, is a paragon of courtesy and friendliness. These qualities seem to be innate and not trained for television.
In keeping with the format of the show, which is rarely controversial and never violent, is the aquarium, behind which the presenter sits to ask his guests questions with his head slightly tilted. They are either live in the Milan studio or are connected to a large video wall. In times of the pandemic, there have recently been fewer and fewer live guests and more and more people connected.
Pope connected live
The special guest this Sunday evening was Pope Francis. This was of course a scoop for Fazio and his team at Rai, which had been duly announced and celebrated days before the show was broadcast on all channels of public broadcaster Rai. In the first part of the show, which dealt with the political events of the past week, all the guests paid their respects to the host and praised him in advance for the “historic achievement” of winning the Pope for an interview.
Anyone who follows the Vatican’s customs and media work, even from afar, should know that Francis would not come to the studio in Milan, but would allow himself to be connected. Of course, Francis’ appearance on live television was not entirely without example. As early as October 1998, John Paul II allowed himself to be questioned on the telephone in a program by star presenter Bruno Vespa.
During the interview, Francis sat alone on a chair in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, he was filmed by at least two cameras from different perspectives. The interview was conducted live from the studio by Fazio, it was not pre-recorded. As early as January 2021, the private competition from TG 5, which belongs to Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset broadcasting family, broadcast a detailed interview with Pope Francis. That had been a bit of a humiliation for public broadcaster Rai, and Fazio’s Sunday night interview may have given Rai leadership some satisfaction. It is Francis alone who decides on such media appearances. Neither the media department of the Vatican nor any advisors or secretaries can talk the pope into it. Francis knows quite well how well most media people mean towards him. And he knows that he is his own best media manager.
No challenging questions
Fazio’s general friendliness to his talk-guests turned to obsequiousness when questioned by the pope. This may not be possible otherwise if, as a Catholic in the journalistic profession, you ask your “Holy Father”. Fazio’s opening question, how Francis manages to “be there for all of us”, how he deals with “this burden”, was a classic “softball question”. The pope duly responded that he had it easy compared to all those Italian families who, with soaring electricity and food prices, didn’t know how to get through to the end of the month. Fazio’s subsequent questions about the migration and climate crises, the origin of evil in the world or social inequality were always posed in a sympathetic manner – like a model student who doesn’t actually know anything about the teacher, but rather wants to impress him with his diligence. Because free speech is not Pope Francis’ forte anyway, many of the answers became quite frayed, soon too fundamental and then again too superficial. No one should have been surprised that Francis denounced the “criminal handling” of Europeans with the boat migrants in the Mediterranean and the “psychology of indifference” in general.
Even with “personal” questions – about musical preferences, whether the Pope has friends and whether he is sometimes lonely – Francis did not really let himself be lured out of his reserve. The answer to the key question of which church the Pope would like for the future also remained vague. Clericalism must be overcome, said Francis, without the lived spirituality of faith the Church would degenerate into a rigid vessel without content instead of “embarking on a pilgrimage”.
devotion and ovations
At the end of the half-hour interview, there were standing ovations from the audience in Milan. Moderator Fazio said he, his other guests and the audience were honored that the Pope “got into our boat”. For him as a journalist and as a person, the conversation was one of the most important in his career. “Che emozione” (roughly “how exciting”) said Fazio’s assistant Filippa Lagerbäck. And then announced the next group of talk guests.
www.faz.net
