THE ARCHABOT EMERITUS OF MONTECASSINO PIETRO VITTORELLI HAS DEAD: CHRISTIAN PIETY CAN ERASE THE SAD TRUTH?

Christian piety cannot omit the truth. Therefore, the site manager I cannot be silent what is is confirmed: one that «He spoke badly of everyone, except Christ, apologizing to the dir: “I do not know him”!» (Epigraph by Paolo Giovio on Pietro l'Aretino).

— News in brief —

(at the bottom of: All our articles)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Our previous articles on the Band of the Silerian:

– 16 August 2025 — I CAN'T BE SILENT And that word taboo that he just can't pronounce: "HOMOSEXUALITY" (To open the article click WHO)

– 14 August 2025 — There is a homosexual? AT THAT TIME I CAN'T BE SILENT Also defends the indefensible (To open the article click WHO)

– 29 March 2025 — Always about I CAN'T BE SILENT: DAL “Vertical man"A" Fireculo "and" quadhow "of Leonardo Sciascia (To open the article click WHO)

– 21 March 2025 — I CAN'T BE SILENT And the story of that convinced seamstress that he can give Giorgio Armani high fashion lessons (To open the article click WHO)

– 12 February 2025 — The Opossum is to the knowledge of the Vatican as Henger is in chastity and like his deceased husband Riccardo Schicchi is at work Confessions OF SAINT AUGUSTINE (To open the article click WHO)

– 15 January 2025 — AT THE CLERICAL BORDERS WITH REALITY: THE WOMAN SUFFERS FROM FREUDIAN PENIS ENVY, The Opossum of the envy by Matteo Bruni Director of the Press Room of the Holy See (To open the article click WHO)

– 20 January 2025 — THE OPOSSUM IGNORE THAT A NUN CAN QUIETLY BECOME GOVERNOR OF THE VATICAN CITY STATE, As already was Giulio Sacchetti (To open the article click WHO)

– 22 November 2024 — THE EPISCOPAL APPOINTMENT OF RENATO TARANTELLI BACCARI. WHEN YOU ARE AFFECTED BY LIVER CANCER, THEY CHARGE ON THE ATTACK THOSE WHO CANNOT BE SILENT (To open the article click WHO)

– 31 May 2024 — A NOTE FROM FATHER ARIEL ON THE SITE I CAN'T BE SILENT: «AS ANNOYING AS A SEA URCHIN INSIDE YOUR UNDERPANTS» (To open the article click WHO)

– 8 December 2023 — WHO IS MARCO FELIPE PERFETTI REFERRING TO STATING FROM THE SITE I CAN'T BE SILENT «HERE IN THE VATICAN… WE IN THE VATICAN…», IF YOU CANNOT EVEN SET FOOT IN THE VATICAN? (To open the article click WHO)

– 14 October 2023 — THE ARCHABOT EMERITUS OF MONTECASSINO PIETRO VITTORELLI HAS DEAD: CHRISTIAN PIETY CAN ERASE THE SAD TRUTH? (To open the article click WHO)

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INTERNET AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY, A COUP DE GRACE INFERRED BY LEGIONS OF IMBECILIALS IN POWER

The destruction of the principle of authority is that element that fundamentally supports the triumph of the fundamentalist dictatorship of non-knowledge, of that crass ignorance, rude and violent which is something completely different from the "not knowing" of the cultured man. And this crass ignorance, rude and violent, it has long since carried out its great and devastating coup through the internet and i social media.

— Church and current events —

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I often remember than when we talk, or when explaining a specific thing, when holding a lesson or conference, when preaching or doing catechesis, it is always of fundamental importance to start by underlining the true meaning of the words, indicating and, if necessary, carefully explaining the true etymological meaning of the terms used.

The wrong accent can start a war, I once said to some people who at the time didn't understand why, while I was talking about topics related to dogmatic theology, incidentally I occasionally explained the meaning of words and terminologies. In fact, there are terms that in philosophy or theology have a totally different meaning from that attributed to them by the current language in which they often, certain words, they have been emptied of their original etymology to be filled with something else and take on an opposite meaning. I explained that not just one word, but even a simple accent can change the meaning of a speech. For instance: the word "peach" can indicate both a fruit and a fisherman with a rod in his hand patiently waiting for the fish to bite the hook, depends on oral pronunciation, or where the accent falls from in a written version. Around you, I love her, it may be the small hook into which the fisherman attaches the fish bait, but it can also be the statement with which a lover declares that he loves another person. The word “anchor” can mean either the weight thrown into the seabed to block the boat and prevent it from continuing to float on the sea currents, but it can also mean repeating a given thing. Even in this case it depends on oral pronunciation, or where the accent falls from in a written version.

An audience of listeners who are not particularly cultured, in which however, precisely the most uncultured, they considered themselves true masters of knowledge, little by little they understood my lexical explanations when I illustrated that the word "punishment", in theological and doctrinal language, has a different meaning from that given to it in the current lexicon. First of all, the etymology of punishment derives from Latin chaste (pure) e act (make/give/give back). The true etymological meaning of this word is therefore "to purify", or “to make pure” or “to restore the lost purity”. A completely different meaning from that of current spoken language. Soon said: if a theologian will speak to an audience about God's punishments, listeners may understand the exact opposite of what he is trying to convey, if anything, giving rise to misunderstandings that do not depend on the way in which the scholar expressed himself or even on the listeners, but consequent to the fact that both give this term a dissimilar meaning, thus ending up speaking two different languages ​​using the same words. In theological language, punishment is a purifying action of the grace and mercy of God who "punishes and shows mercy" (Tb 13,2) because «The Lord is merciful and merciful, slow to anger and rich in goodness" (Shall 103). Therefore, divine punishment, in the economy of salvation it is a true act of love by the Creator towards his creatures. And here I point out in passing that the term "economy" just used has, similarly to that of "punishment", a meaning that is also completely different from that of the current spoken lexicon. This Greek-derived lemma ― oἰκονομικά ― appears in a work attributed to Aristotle who uses it to indicate the management of oἰκος, that is, of the family and what belongs to it. For the Greeks the economy was not a factor, as we understand it today, an autonomous reality that operates equally autonomously. And precisely because of this word I used with reference to the "economy of salvation", someone present - obviously the most cultured and refined of all the listeners - started laughing and then showed evidence of crass ignorance by asking me publicly:

"But she, talking about the economy of salvation, he always stuck to the sale of indulgences?».

A very widespread characteristic in today's society non è il sapiente e saggio "I know that I don't know" (xéro óti den xéro, I know I do not know), according to the wise maxim of Socrates reported later by Plato in the Apology of Socrates. Today, the sovereign principle in our increasingly uncultured and arrogant masses is the exact opposite: know what you don't know, then discuss, contest and often even attack through various channels social media those who know and who for this very reason try in vain to provide clarifications, according to the psychopathological style of who, despite not knowing, However, he presumes to know more than ever.

In people of true culture knowledge is founded and moves on the basis of Socratic wisdom "I know that I don't know". Because no matter how much one may have dedicated their entire existence to study and research, all of us, even the most cultured, we remain basically ignorant in the etymological sense of the term ignorant of his predecessors hence the term ignorance, its turn derived from the Greek verb γνωρίζειν (gnorízein), which literally means "lack of knowledge". Or any of us, including long-time scholars, he would perhaps be able to say: “I know everything”? When Rita Levi Montalcini became Senator for life, distinguished neurobiologist scientist, shortly after the Nobel Prize was awarded in 1986, for having discovered the Nerve Growth Factor (the growth element of the nerve fiber), during a public event she was told that she was among the few people in the world who knew the human brain. In response she replied:

«Of the human brain, in my life, I learned something, but just something, because many of its resources remain unknown and today, we scientists, we can say we know about the 5% of its potential".

Let's now try to move from neuroscience to theology and specifically to patristics or patrology. There is a patrologist in the world capable of claiming to know in depth the works of all the great Fathers and doctors of the Church, from major to minor ones, or to have even simply read them all? I know patrologists in their eighties who have dedicated their entire lives to studying the Cappadocian Fathers, also known as the Wise Men of Cappadocia, which are three: the Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus also known as Nazianzen. Of all the others they have a summary knowledge, many others still have never examined and studied them, not even read. The true man of culture is aware, precisely because it is so, of one's ignorance, precisely because true knowledge necessarily comes from the awareness of not knowing: «… of the human brain, in my life, I learned something, but only something".

The destruction of the principle of authority it is that element that fundamentally supports the triumph of the fundamentalist dictatorship of non-knowledge, of that crass ignorance, rude and violent which is something completely different from the "not knowing" of the cultured man. And this crass ignorance, rude and violent, it has long since carried out its great and devastating coup through the internet and i social media. The cancellation of cultural roles, social, political and religious develops at its worst through these channels which constitute the destructive element of every principle of authority. This is a problem that requires us to take a historical-social leap backwards to be understood, to be precise, the inglorious seventies of the twentieth century, with all its devastating and emotional "do not forbid", «imagination in power» and so on. In that season a real process of subversion took place, reversal and finally a real elimination of roles. Today the teacher is no longer someone sitting on a desk in a higher position, which not by chance had a pedagogical and symbolic platform that raised it in height above the desks where the students sat, from which he dispensed his teaching to subjects who had to remain silent, listen and learn, responding only when questioned, or, when granted, ask questions about what the teacher had explained but which had not been well understood. Many lower or high school teachers, or university professors, at the end of their lessons they used to ask: «I was clear... I explained myself well? You have some clarifying questions to ask?». I honestly have no memory of ever hearing any of my schoolmates or university colleagues speak up: «I don't agree with what he said because in my opinion… I think that…». This could have meant finding yourself later in the exam in front of an examiner who could have made you repent of your past sins in an impeccable manner and in full compliance with the law and academic rules., present and even future. And I will tell: it would have done well too, because arrogance must be punished, precisely for the sake of the arrogant, which needs to be corrected, not indulged, less than ever tolerated. Arrogance is in itself intolerable.

The post-1968 teacher he has become the one with whom we dialogue and compare ourselves, no longer in a vertical role position, that is, from above (teacher) downward (students), but in a horizontal relationship. If then, in this kind of sick relationship relationship - which could not and never should be, first of all for the good of those who have to learn - one starts challenging the teacher with "I don't agree", because I think that... because in my opinion...", here is that subject, today, he will even be judged as a particularly brilliant student. Then, if he insults the teacher, at that point he will become the favorite of all his companions and his comrades they will send him little hearts for WhatsApp, or directly their half-naked images on Instagram. Nobody thinks that today's parent, learning of his son's feat, you feel a sense of human shame for having a child who is rude to that level, because the answer will be more or less this: «He insulted him, you can see he deserved it". Or maybe it can, today's parent, feeling ashamed and then admitting that he was a total educational failure? Of course not, therefore it is the insulted teacher who is wrong and the child who is right.

The exams I took at the time first in high school and then at university ― me like everyone else ― were not based on a dialogue between peers, but on a completely unequal relationship where a person is vested with authority, the professor, he asked me questions to which I, student, in a subordinate position I had to answer precisely, especially in the strict merit of what had been requested of me, showing that I had acquired and developed the knowledge that had been transmitted to me. Having done this the authority, that is, the high school teacher or the ordinary university professor, he expressed a judgment on me in the form of a vote, with a rating given in numbers between 0 e 10 or between 18 e 30. I got to have teachers who were talented, knowledgeable people, as well as educational qualities, as I have had others that were mediocre, equipped with little science and, if anything, also lacking in teaching skills. However, it was not our job as students to evaluate teachers, that could be judged, for their merits or demerits, only by their superiors, or at least by their peers, certainly not from the students who were acquiring knowledge and who had not yet acquired and matured. This made them lack the necessary judgment skills - including contestation - to be able to express positive or negative judgments on the qualities and abilities of the teachers..

Cases have been multiplying for years in which the disastrous parents of certain students, worthy children or grandchildren of the less than glorious Sixty-eight and the Seventies that followed, they do not even limit themselves to appealing to the Regional Administrative Courts for a failure they consider unjust, because they clog them up with appeals even for a vote since, in their opinion, it was not adequate. If the parent, more or less the son or grandson of 1968 or the 1970s, he is unable to pass on to his child the healthy and healthy principle of authority and respect that is due to authority, society is inevitably doomed to colossal failure after descending into the absolute worst and most destructive form of anarchy: the anarchy of emotions, or if we prefer "forbidden to forbid" and "imagination in power".

These are the results that are before our eyes today: the parent ceases to be a parent and becomes a friend or a "criminal" accomplice of the child; the teacher is a subject with whom one compares oneself, contesting it and giving vent to one's egocentrism with "I don't agree... because I think that... because in my opinion..."; the doctor is no longer the one who treats you but a person who can be interrupted while he is giving you a diagnosis by expressing the fateful phrase «Ah, I do not agree, because I read on the internet that..."; state offices, from the carabiniere to the policeman up to the Senator for life of the Italian Republic who became such due to special merits, they are figures who are often mocked and debased by people who do not even know the first fundamental article of the Constitution of the Italian Republic and who are completely ignorant of the republican system in which they live; priests and theologians are people now relegated to the most useless and marginal roles of civil society to whom young people suffering from functional or digital illiteracy turn face to face with the "you" telling them how and why the Church makes mistakes, or putting their foot down because they have to act as godparents at baptism, however, they had not been confirmed, here, after having made a profession of not believing the truths announced by the Church, they tell you, if anything even with a bad face "I have the right to do Confirmation because I need it", ignoring that the Sacraments are not a right but an action of divine grace … In short, a society in which, together with the principle of authority, all the rules have disappeared, with a mass of arrogant ignorant people who every half sentence pronounce «I have the right to… I have the right to…» but in an egocentric and anarchic way they don't even accept the vague idea itself that alongside rights there are duties and vice versa, since a society made only of rights cannot exist, just as one made only of duties cannot exist.

I have quoted Umberto Eco several times in various of my writings that touched on the problem of the internet and social media, because with four brushstrokes he depicted, more than a problem, a real social disaster:

«I social media they give the right to speak to legions of idiots who previously only spoke at the bar after a glass of wine, without damaging the community. They were immediately silenced, while now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It is the invasion of imbeciles!» (cf.. WHO).

Before the semiologist Umberto Eco, when still i social media they had not taken the field, a famous Italian mathematician, George Israel, he expressed himself this way about the internet:

«It is true - as someone noted - that I have decided to put an end to this type of “dialogue”. It highlighted two of the worst aspects of the internet, a means which I will not give up anyway, but not to give in to the evil temptations it leads to. I am alluding to the loss of inhibitions whereby one believes one can treat people with whom one would not dare to do so hastily and even rudely. de visu; and the tendency to pass judgment on crucial issues that are perhaps the subject of secular reflection, even calling anyone who doesn't comply an idiot" (cf.. Article from May 2008 taken from Giorgio Israel's website).

Forgive me if I use myself as an example, but I believe that transmitting one's personal experience is important, especially by a presbyter and a theologian who has just reached the threshold of sixty years of age. This means - or at least it is assumed - to have acquired and developed a certain life experience and, through methodical research studies continued over time, a certain knowledge, always and rigorously based on the awareness of "I know that I don't know". As always we exemplify: once, the classic frigid hysteric who was reactively affected by obsessive neuroses of a pseudo-religious nature, after causing problems, friction, arguments and confusion of various kinds in the parish, or perhaps even before it could generate similar things, she was taken aside by some of the parish priests who were, made new from head to toe and then chased away. Today the classic frigid hysteric reactively affected by obsessive neuroses of a pseudo-religious nature dives into the sea of social media, goes hunting for the priests' pages and with a quarrelsome and aggressive spirit begins to challenge them in an insulting and provocative tone, especially if the priest has written a clear and precise post in which he deals in a simple way with serious matters in terms of doctrine and faith, making them understandable to the general public, but to which she responds with absurd nonsense. This is one of the main pitfalls of social media, for us presbyters and theologians as for any scholar or for any person who in society has what he should be, but above all it should be felt and respected as a role of authority.

In internet, but above all in social media, as Giorgio Israel pointed out many years ago, there is a total loss "of inhibitions that allow people to be treated hastily and even rudely with people they wouldn't dare to do so with." de visu». Which adds a worse element: «the tendency to pass judgment on crucial issues that are perhaps the subject of secular reflection, even calling anyone who doesn't comply an idiot". We have had recent experience of this, moreover linked to an affair that brought civil societies to their knees for two years, governments and the economy: the Covid-19 pandemic. Who among us does not remember armies of shampoo girls and bar intellectuals with a lower secondary school diploma from evening schools who, between one ungrammatical message and another, denied the most expert virologists and infectious disease specialists because they had read on blogs managed by equally arrogant ignorant people that …? I tried to respond in this way to many of these people at the time:

«Science is not perfect and has always been fallible and defeasible. Vaccine yes, vaccine no? Personally I have decided to trust science, that he can make mistakes and has often made mistakes. However, I intend to make an act of faith towards science, because if anyone must be wrong about me, I prefer that the mistake is made by a specialist in an attempt to save me rather than by a naturopath-esotericist hunting for idiots who makes people believe he can cure them with homeopathic pills and colored magnetic stones. Also because, while science asks for trust when necessary, these charlatans and those who decide to follow them ask and demand instead real acts of blind faith regarding what is absurd and anti-scientific they say and support".

At that delicate juncture as in other different but similar ones, public and private television stations have burdened themselves with enormous responsibilities that a true civil society and truly enlightened politics should not have hesitated to make pay dearly out of a sense of justice and for the protection of the population. In fact, we remember that while people were locked in their homes at the height of lockdown, for five days a week, three or four hours every evening, in all the most followed talk show quarrels and brawls were encouraged and fomented between clinical specialists and ignorant emeritus people taken from the street who contested and denied them. All passed off as the right to information and the right to freedom of speech. Request: of when, the imbeciles, they have the right to express themselves in prime time on public and private television, even more so to challenge and refute scholars with absurd and irrational theories, even more than anti-scientific? The television networks were really interested in giving everyone a voice? And since when, this passionate love for truth on the part of mass media that they usually hide the truth, manipulate and distort it, when it suits the bosses who keep them tight and tied to their payrolls? No, the truth was completely different: the editorial staff of television programmes, with a cynicism that it would have been good to make him pay dearly for, they had a single purpose, much higher than Covid-19 and the pandemic danger itself: audience ratings. More brawls broke out in the television studios, the more the audience ratings went up. But let's go back to Umberto Eco again:

«Television had promoted the village idiot compared to whom the viewer felt superior. The tragedy of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the bearer of truth" (cf.. WHO).

Call yourselves an "old-fashioned" priest, if you prefer demodé, but I remain aware that the Church, through the so-called three gifts, he sent me to teach, to sanctify and guide the People of God, this after having trained me, educated and specialized in theological sciences, therefore giving me a mandate. This is my job, both for those who believe in it and for those who, even if you don't believe it, he would still be required to respect it, especially in this world in which respect and maximum political correctness are de rigueur even for the last of the illegal immigrants landed on our shores and for transsexuals balancing on stiletto heels, who certainly do not have a human dignity superior to that of a human being called a priest. As a result, the task of ours believers of Christ it remains today to accept our teaching, allow yourself to be sanctified through the Sacraments of grace administered by us and be guided on the path of Christian life, or if you prefer to be governed by pastors within the Church, where you are free to enter and from which, to be understood, you are free to leave, but no one has the right and the recognized freedom to insolent the shepherds.

Soon said: come minister in sacred I am not a person with whom any person who proclaims himself Catholic or believer can deal face to face, because the relationship is theologically and hierarchically bottom-up (loyal) upward (presbyter). It is not the believer or worse the presumed one who can wag his finger and give me lessons on how a priest should be a priest or on how he should transmit the truths of the faith, or worse, which truths can be good and which "must" be changed instead. All expressed by subjects who have never even looked at the Catechism of the Catholic Church and who therefore ignore that the truths of faith are immutable and certainly not mutable at will, with lots of like on social, because "I think that... in my opinion...".

In front of this kind of people I act and interact in two ways: or I reprimand them with a severe and, if necessary, authoritarian attitude, making it clear to them that I am not their companion, much less a person with whom they can think of confronting one-on-one, or, as in the case of social media in which relationships are perversely horizontal, I react with a sneer, with the colorful word, sometimes even using some completely random trivial phrase, less than ever instinctive or emotional, but precisely scientifically studied and desired in order to shake up certain subjects, whose reaction is as evident as it is obvious: «Shame of a priest... vulgar priest... but you really are a priest?». Yup, I'm a priest, with the aggravating circumstance of also being a theologian to whom you, young girl or do-nothing woman, after having spent the day browsing the internet in search of gossip and titillating news, you thought you could explain what the Catholic faith really is. Because the most disrespectful and most violent of all are de rigueur: give it, how they feel social media. Or it could happen that I don't respond and that I respond to some of these angry comments by posting on my page social the photography of Only Rose in spray version used by women for vaginal itching, if anything accompanying the photo with the phrase: "they say it works...".

Imbeciles always take things seriously and they desperately need to be taken seriously, because the social authorities are felt, scientific, policies, moral and religious which they absolutely are not, this thing that, for a sort of strange and complex unconscious envy, it leads them to insult those who truly and legitimately hold these roles of authority. What is not serious, never be caught and treated as if he were. A quel point, clever mockery is the only antidote. It's about cunning and subtle pedagogy: mocking one happens that he, together with others 100, they post hundreds of insulting comments to you, but it almost always happens that at least two or three, in front of your answers, they understand, giving you and recognizing the social role and authority that you deserve and are owed, because certain relationships are not, nor can they ever be equal, nor based on the principle of «… in my opinion… I think that…».

As a presbyter I can ask my Bishop opinion and advice, expose a problem and ask for suggestions for its solution, I can also raise doubts about certain choices or pastoral directives, with all the deepest courtesy of the case I can also offer some advice, because every priest is a close collaborator of the Bishop. However, I cannot dispute him and reject what he has established, thus placing me above him, because I am the one who depends on his authority, to whom I promised filial respect and devout obedience with a solemn sacramental act. It is the Bishop who granted me the mandate and the related faculty to celebrate the Holy Mass, to preach the Holy Gospel, to absolve from sins and to care for and safeguard the People of God, all in a relationship of subordination, because I am subjected in a subordinate way to the apostolic authority of the Bishop, who has the power, wanting or deeming it appropriate, to revoke this mandate as well, partially or totally, if he deemed me inadequate or unworthy. So, even if I had a hundred reasons in and of itself, if I dared to place myself above his apostolic authority, those reasons would turn into a thousand serious wrongs which would make me a terrible priest and which would cause scandal and disorientation to the believers of Christ. This, it is the principle of authority in the Church, entirely based on the theological virtues of faith, of hope and charity (cf.. The Cor 1.13). And make it clear to the Catholics of «in my opinion … I do not agree ..", it's not easy.

At times, to recover people and bring others to reason, a photo of a pharmacological product against vaginal itching may be more useful rather than a useless dissertation on certain key principles enunciated by the Holy Father and Doctor of the Church Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who also had good knowledge of vaginas, when he was always Aurelius of Tagaste. And someone, after laughing about Only Rose which relieves vaginal itching, it may be that he understands and then opens up. Only at that point will it be possible to talk about the Gospel and the precious thoughts of Saint Augustine, producing good fruit, all thanks to a teasing joke that started with a product that relieves vaginal itching.

Who is in authority, faced with this total crisis of every principle of authority today there are two solutions: or he starts fighting in vain against windmills by speaking a language that the masses are ignorant of, arrogant and quarrelsome people who swarm the social media I am not even able to understand and understand, or he makes fun of imbeciles while maintaining the respect that is due to him and that is due to him. Recovering some from time to time, which is no small thing these days:

«Who among you has a hundred sheep and loses one, he does not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and goes after the lost one, until he finds her again? Find it again, he puts it on his shoulder all happy, go home, call friends and neighbors saying: “Rejoice with me, because I found my lost sheep". Like this, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven for a converted sinner, that for ninety-nine righteous people who do not need conversion" (LC 15, 4-7).

I social media I am an ocean where sardines think they are sharks and where cod have the killer whale complex, but yet, occasionally, it is possible to recover some sea bass, aware first of all that he is a bass.

 

the Island of Patmos, 9 October 2023

 

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Father Ariel's new book has been released and is being distributed, you can buy it by clicking directly on the cover image or by entering our bookshop WHO

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FERNANDO BOTERO IS DEAD, ENHANCER OF THE FAT COLORS OF LIFE AND ANTAGONIST OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC ANOREXIA

The inspiration, creative flair, genius is useless, if this grandeur is not always accompanied by hard work and sacrifice. Along with this dedication to work there was always the choice of one's life: «Do what we like, never stop doing what you like and what makes you feel good".

- Actuality -

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I grew up there’shadow of the first sculpture by the master Fernando Botero, woman torso, known to all as the fat girl O the GOrda de Berrio in reference to the Parque de Berrío square where the statue was located before its move to the theme park created in honor of the artist. This statue gigantic and voluminous it was built in 1987 and measure of 2 meters e 48 centimeters tall, one meter and 76 in width, 1 metro e 7 centimeters deep.

The statue had been installed in front of the regional headquarters of the State Bank and in front of a square that was one of the main bus and taxi stops, as well as being a meeting point. The shape of the sculpture always left me amazed and wondering: «Women are not like that, which colombian woman is fat like this?!». Yet my gaze always remained fixed on that work illuminated in a play of lights by the sun when the sun rose or set..

All the born in recent decades of the last century were delighted to observe this sculpture while the transformation of the city was underway with the construction of Colombia's first metro network in the City of Medellin, which marked the leap forward of the Andean metropolis from a semi-industrial agricultural city towards the new millennium which would project it towards tourism, including artistic tourism, thanks not least to maestro Fernando Botero. In some metro stations there are works of art inspired by him, in others you can feel his spirit and style and in one particularly, the one near the square where his stands Gorda today a beautiful thing rises art park with several voluminous Boterian statues.

In those years there was noIt was an exhibition space intended for this great interpreter of our time, in fact there was no real space for art at all. And for me, as for many of my other compatriots, the first reference to the world of fine arts was the master Fernando Botero, whose artistic creativity we were able to catch even in passing while waiting for some transport service or some person. Today, the new generations, not only can they contemplate the numerous works scattered throughout the city, because thanks to his patronage - which made him the greatest contemporary patron that the city of Medellin and Colombia itself had - he favored the creation of the various exhibition spaces with his works and those of European masters, previously excluded if they were not mentioned in history books and encyclopedias [1].

The figure of Fernando Botero it has always been outside the artistic environment for me, model and memory of a virile figure with whom I grew up, so were my grandparents and the men of my land. Always interested in the good of the family, in union and harmony in beautiful moments as well as in difficult and painful ones. A family unit also involved in the interests and activities of paterfamilias, as the Master's children have said on several occasions, when in their father's memory they explained that in the creation of their works he asked them to help him paint the canvas. Some details were then used by him as decorations in the lower margins of his works, other children's jobs have been cancelled, but in them remained the memory and the teaching of having helped their father by participating in his artistic efforts.

This kind of men they tried to nourish the habit, today unfortunately lost or forgotten, to get the family together to spend time in a specific place. Of course, in the case of the maestro, one cannot help but admire his high taste for having chosen the beautiful Tuscan town of Pietrasanta in the province of Lucca[2]. like the environment in which every time he could he had his whole family come to live days with moments full of affection to remember for a lifetime. Even before developing his style and his works, one of the main teachings that he never stopped transmitting, especially to his family and his few friends - Botero was a very private person - it was his work: «there is only one 5% inspirational and 95% of sweating", because in his view every kind of job had to be so well done and tiring that it made you sweat.

The inspiration, creative flair, the genius they are of no use, if this grandeur is not always accompanied by hard work and sacrifice. Along with this dedication to work there was always the choice of one's life: «Do what we like, never stop doing what you like and what makes you feel good". In one of the latest documentaries made in his honor, the teacher, at the end of the video, he looks sitting on a chair in front of a small and simple house typical of the rural areas of the city. Speaking to the interviewer he complains of the sadness he felt due to the knowledge that he would soon die and he still had many things to do, and this made him feel happy. The work, that job he had chosen to follow all his life, it gave him pleasure, because he chose to do so.

The characteristic style dthe artist called “butterism", it is not made up of fat but "voluminous" figures depicted in different scenarios and situations, following the European tradition that came to life in the Renaissance with Michelangelo, Mantegna, Raffaello, Piero della Francesca[3]. Accompanied in his sculptural art by the inspiration of the serene monumentalism of Paolo Uccello. A figurative style combined with a colorful and lovable aesthetic that drew inspiration from the dramatic style of the early years muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, subsequently deepened during his stay in Europe while studying in the Academies of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Spain, with studies on the works of Goya and Velázquez, and at the Accademia Fiorentina di San Marco with the study of Titian's works, Giotto and Botticelli[4]. The Master thus projects himself into the 1980s with the development of the expanded volume of the form which, despite the "exaggerated" dimensions, does not disturb the proportion of the figure in all its characteristics., without giving up those influences that are the traits of his Colombian homeland, vibrant color, lively and brilliant, inspired by his own hometown of Medellin, known for urbanizations rich in exaggerated and marked chromaticism that recalls that style naive capable of transmitting the carefree notes of a peaceful life in the open air, up to the painful "accents" of the violence seen and experienced.

It seems that in the fifties the Master found its stylistic dimension when in the creation of the still life study he applied the "dilation" to the mandolin. The artist was viscerally struck by the result of his form dilated beyond the natural, thus generating the evocation of a profound sensuality as a sign of vitality, of joy and prosperity that this voluminous expression will become in the years to come, original character all of its own recognized worldwide. This is how he describes this significant moment in an interview in 2007:

«What happened was very simple. I was drawing a mandolin with a very generous profile as I learned from the Italians. Then, the moment I cut the hole in the mandolin, I made it very small. Suddenly, this mandolin became huge, monumental due to the contrast between the small detail and the generous outline. I saw that something happened there. I immediately started trying to visualize other subjects. It took a long time – 10, 15 years – before I developed a more or less coherent vision of what I wanted to do, but at the beginning it was that little sketch inspired by my love for Italian art" (see WHO).

At the beginning of the seventies its commercial listing begins[5] and critical acclaim, after he had taken up residence in Europe[6]. It was then that the Maestro began to create sculptures following the voluminous style that seems to emerge from the canvases to acquire the three-dimensionality known in his works scattered around the world[7].

The Eighties, until the first years of the new century, characterize the master's artistic research with depictions and scenes of violence experienced with the war on drug trafficking in Medellin and the pictorial cycle on the different report on the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison by members of the United States military and the CIA during the Iraq war.

Regardless of public and commercial recognition, a certain form of artistic criticism has never been positive or lenient towards him. Since his first exhibitions in the United States, several North American critics have judged him in a destructive manner - unlike the public who has deeply appreciated him since his first works - defining the artist and his art as «not belonging to contemporary evolution; simplistic and caricatured human figures inserted in sunny contexts of family life; lack of seriousness about his sculptures which deprived him of a specific critical examination". But to define it: «A simple commercial phenomenon of a self-referential author disconnected from reality» (see WHO).

Although this may appear to be a subjective or biased judgement, I think I can say that the Master was one of the few, if not the last great artist who during his lifetime had maintained the quality and value of his works at a very high level. Also in this regard there are several testimonies told by the family members themselves who remember times in the past, during periods of difficulty and economic hardship, when he was already recognized for his skill but had not yet had any economic results, but full of so much imagination, walked through the cities where, if he found some piece of wood or steel that he thought would be useful to him, he would take it and use it to create toys for his children or utensils for the house. The lack of money therefore abounded with imagination and the desire to always create something new and useful.

The Maestro was a great enthusiast of many sports, especially football, one of the most followed sports in his native Colombia, especially in Medellin. This great interest in football among Colombians, from the first years of life, finds confirmation in the work Children playing soccer (children playing football).

Horse riding is represented indirectly on a canvas that turned out to be the work that marked one of the saddest moments of the artist's life: Pedro on horseback. Painting described by the Author himself as the painting he had painted with the greatest pain in his life and for this reason he considered it the work he loved most and also his master work. This canvas was born from the mourning he had with the death of his four-year-old son in a car accident in Spain in the Seventies. This canvas is located in the museum of the Author's region of origin and is a portrait where blue predominates of a child riding a toy horse, in the lower corners the painful scenes of the father who saw his dead son and then the scene of the grieving parents inside the empty house are depicted (see WHO).

The cycle of his bullfighting works mainly made in the 1980s, it is considered as the "artist's confession", a reflection on death and its presence in an exercise of nostalgia and struggle on the dramatic scenes of bullfighting. Personally I remember my period of study at the University of Salamanca, when a professor tries to argue the meaning and universal value of bullfighting, explained that before the race the bulls lived free, strong and served like gods. Only the strongest and most majestic specimens were chosen who had earned the opportunity to demonstrate all their race and panache in the Arena., "on equal terms" between the ugly and pure power of the bull against the mastery of the dance and provocation of the bullfighter. In the opinion of the professor of classical culture, it is a modern version of the gladiator fight, or even more the modern evocation of man's struggles against the mythological and divine figures of antiquity; where the skill of the man who fights and even puts his life at risk, without anything written or defined as in game managed only by, of fate.

As an explanation of bullfighting made the subject of the Master's pictorial art, the traditions of his native homeland remain. In the same city of Medellin there is a very renowned Arena in the Andean area, and the opening of the season racing it marked a particularly significant date in the social life of the citizens. If football matches were the epicenters of passion and popular interests in the city, the days in the arena with its bullfighting shows were the fulcrum for the city's upper middle class classes.

According to some sources close to the master it was the taste for bullfighting that generated the love for painting in the young Fernando Botero. Significant, within this pictorial cycle, the work The goring, oil on canvas, 1998. Emblematic demonstration of the artist's passion for bulls and his reflection on death characterized by the satisfying expression depicted on the bullfighter's face after being gored. Other relevant works are dying bull 1985, Death of Ramfrom the Torres, 1986.

The cycle of works on violence in Colombia has raised many questions in South American academic and art critical circles regarding the relationship between reality and art, especially how they feed, art and violence align or deny each other. For some, the connection between art and reality in these works maintains a possible meaning only on a social level as the artist's representation constitutes an "objectification" of the experience to make it accessible to those who contemplate it. As a result, the artist's creations, they are a rational necessity, not a simple desire, nor a whim or a psychological need. Those who look at those works are encouraged to focus their attention on the concrete state of social reality or of the individual, without promoting or glorifying an ideological or political system that would end up putting the very autonomy of art at risk, making it a political tool or a means of dissuasion and distraction for those who observe the artistic work.

Others consider this connection to form a single whole which allows both the artist and those who observe his works the possibility of grasping a position and a concrete choice of a specific historical moment of life and reality. Creating like this, not the arbitrary creative sense of inspiration and/or contemplation; but as a condition of possibility both for artistic creativity and for the culture and subjective experience of those who contemplate. The condition of possibility and/or choice becomes, like this, a compromise of individual production that offers meaning and purpose to works of art as aspirations, motivations for the community and for the singularity of both the artist and the visitor.

Other opinions have cataloged this pictorial cycle as a hedonistic act of a self-referential artist who lives in a pseudo-expressionist "limbo" of failed realism intensified by the accentuation of certain particular aspects through grotesque figures that bring the gravity of the armed conflict experienced in Colombia to a trivialization very close to caricature. The Maestro himself had to return to talk about his pictorial cycle on several occasions, in one of them he said:

«I have always expressed, and I did it until recently: art is to give pleasure and not to annoy or distress the public. Who has seen a sad impressionist painting? when you saw a sad Titian? a sad Velazquez? Great painting has a positive attitude towards life. I am against art that transforms itself into a witness of time as a combat weapon. But faced with the drama that was experienced in Colombia, the moment had come in which I felt the moral obligation to leave my testimony on the irrational moment in the history of my country. I don't pretend that these paintings can fix anything, in fact I am convinced that they will not solve anything. I am aware that art changes nothing, those responsible for the changes are solely politicians. I just want to leave a testimony as an artist who lived and felt his homeland and his time. It would be like saying: look at the madness in which we live, Let's hope it never happens again. I don't do "committed art", that art that aspires to transform things, I don't believe in that kind of art" (see WHO)

The cycle of works on the female world of maestro Botero the large number of works demonstrates the artist's attention and interest in women, a theme that he himself considers to be one of the main themes of universal art. The choice to represent voluminous women contrary to the canon of thinness imposed on women, it is not so much a choice of protest against the stereotypes that are inculcated as a model of beauty, but as a style and personal conviction as a painter and sculptor who transforms the shapes of voluminous subjects into a source of joy. And art must always generate and transmit pleasure. The voluminousness, according to Fernando Botero, was born in flat painting during the Middle Ages, but it was Italian artists who developed the volume from the Renaissance onwards. The voluminousness is almost a "sort of miracle" that still remains as it is. Today this volume - reiterates the Maestro - has become part of the history and of the very perception of art. But it was like a "lightning bolt" that can still be seen and whose sound can still be heard; miracle from which, today again, we were amazed. Among the most significant works of these themes there are numerous paintings of an erotic nature such as Woman with lipstick (woman with lipstick) watercolor and ink on paper, 2002, Bath, pencil work on paper, 2002.

So far, there is no total figure for the number of works by the artist, nor even a reasoned and updated catalog - also considering the many donations of works that the Maestro has made in recent years, including many works and most of his most representative sculptures -, cycles like that of violence still exist, but also a series of paintings from his youth - it must be considered that the artist painted almost every day from the age of 14 years until the compliment of his 90 year old; works that are private property of the family and have not been catalogued. In the same way, what is missing is a detailed survey around the world of "boterist" art; according to the rough estimate it could exceed more 2000 works between canvases, sketches, caricatures and illustrations for newspapers.

Among his exhibitions in Italy must be considered: Rome, Palazzo Venezia, 2005, where he presented his pictorial cycle to the public with fifty canvases that testified to the screams of protest full of a disturbing force against the injustice committed against prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Works where one must note the care taken in the use of perspective which changes based on the positioning of the prison bars: the spectator is projected both outside and inside the cells. All this enhances the sense of identification in victims, almost as if there was a reversal of position between those who observe and those who suffer, functional to feel the suffering of others. The images appear more compromising, deeply disturbing and disturbing, as much as the crimes committed. The artistic urgency to express the anger and indignation felt, meant that the Colombian artist dedicated himself to the project for over a year and that in the end, according to what he himself said, it led him to a sense of emptiness where he had nothing left to say. Following Palermo, Palace of the Normans, 2015, considered the artistic event of the year in the city, and in which maestro Botero himself declared that for the creation of Judas he was inspired by a mafioso as contained in this beautiful testimony of his:

«I was fascinated by Italian art and the importance it gives to shapes and volume. I was seduced by the sensuality of Italian painting, by its roundness. Now thinner shapes are preferred, thin women, but at the beginning of the century, rounder ones were preferred. A sensitivity that changes" (see WHO).

In 2016 did a traveling exhibition with the most significant stops in Palermo and Rome entitled: Way of the cross. Christ's passion in which he addressed one of the most covered themes in Western sacred painting from the Renaissance to the present day: the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Cycle of sumptuous colors and shapes through rounded and cold subjects. Recurring sacred theme even though the teacher is not considered a religious person, however, he recognized how the religious theme had in itself a beautiful and long artistic tradition. The Way of the cross, centerpiece of the exhibition, it is the artist's reinterpretation in which he mixes Latin American traditions and realities with the biblical theme, demonstrating the importance of the drama of Jesus' last days which marked the whole of humanity forever. In these oils Jesus appears very human, without halos, interpreter of the suffering of the world. The master's research is done on the combination of historical truth mixed with some truths, such as for example the use of contemporary characters connected to the image of Christ who testifies with Botero's own style to his being a believer but not a practitioner, profoundly respectful of the sphere of the sacred without falling into satire. The Master's in-depth study of the dramatic subject - a subject studied as a favorite theme of art until the sixteenth century - which in the twentieth century could have and offer a new vision according to contemporary sensitivity (see WHO).

In 2017, at Palazzo Forti in Verona, the monographic exhibition was held to pay homage to fifty years of career with 50 masterpieces that summarized the dreamlike dimension, fantastic and fairy-tale with an echo of nostalgia among animals, men; re-enactment of his native continent of Latin America. An exhibition followed in Bologna, at Palazzo Pallavicini, in the autumn of 2019, with 50 works including mixed media drawings and color watercolors with the theme of bullfighting and the circus (see WHO)

It will remain in the memory and in the history of art the exhibition Boatman to Parma with 47 plaster casts, bronzes and several paintings at the Governor's Palace in 2013. During, the opening party the Master declared:

«Art must give pleasure to the public, do not cause suffering or disturb. Sculptures and paintings must speak clearly" there must be no barriers to understanding" (see WHO)

There are countless sculptures by the master Fernando Botero around the world but for the love that the Fathers of The Island of Patmos have towards cats ― faithful companions of hard work and long days of work in the creation of their texts ― we must mention the Botero's Cat, sculpture by 7 meters wide per 2 meters high and 2 thick with long tail and comical snout, now a distinctive symbol of the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona. Mammoth cat that between the 1987, year in which the municipality of Barcelona purchased it, and the 2003, changed location within the city more than four times - almost as if to represent the felines that will continually circle and move until they have found the perfect place to stay, like our cat Bruno who climbed onto my computer desk while I was writing these lines about Botero's cat, turning forcefully in front of me, sometimes preventing the view of the screen or other times sitting on the keyboard as master of the space. Indeed, as happened with Botero's Cat, he has to try different seats and body positions before choosing what he thinks will be the most comfortable place, solemn and more visible (see WHO).

Vittorio Sgarbi in an interview given on the day of the Maestro's death, regarding the figure of Fernando Botero he defined him as an artist of life. A painter who in each of his works represents the scene of a comedy where both the context of the work and the subject of the canvas themselves tell a song to life in their daily lives. This joy and cheerfulness of Botero was in a certain sense revolutionary against the common thread of twentieth-century art, especially that generated by the avant-gardes who have certainly and masterfully expressed the crisis, the tragedy and drama of man and civilization after two wars, with psychoanalysis and the social struggle for the freedoms and rights of the sexes. On the one hand it is very easy to paint tragedy, especially when you experience situations of continuous anguish, while it is much more difficult to tell stories, fairy tales and magic with the colors of life; This also gives rise to the choice of fat or voluminous models. Fat evokes and represents happiness while thinness represents sadness, the drama and the pain. Fernando Botero is an artist who remains faithful to tradition in the use of technique, of the colors and also of the choice of the theme such as celebrating and enhancing the colors of its magical-fantastic Christmas region.

Regarding the words expressed by Fernando Botero in Parma In the 2013, Vittorio Sgarbi reiterated that these were the reasons why his art had become universal, its simplicity allowed it to reach and welcome any type of audience and to cross any historical period or form of artistic criticism. The universality of the master Fernando Botero has not only transcended the boundaries of specifically artistic or academic environments, but also social ones. The artist himself was aware of this universality demonstrated with his words in one of his interviews, when telling the anecdote of a trip to the Colombian Amazon, being located in the Puerto Nariño region, inside a small, poor house he found a reproduction of one of his works, this thing leaves him enraptured.

With Fernando Botero he dies one of the last greats in the history of twentieth century painting.

 

the Island of Patmos, 27 September 2023

 

NOTE

[1] The last known donation is more than that 700 works to the museums and squares that beautify Colombia. Throughout his life Fernando Botero sponsored scholarships intended for talents who could continue their studies both within Colombia and abroad in the areas of music, the plastic arts, letters and literature. Ana Maria Escallón, author of the book Botero: new works on canvas and who participated in supporting one of the largest donations that became part of the national heritage, explains this donation as a total act of charity by the artist, who didn't want to keep anything with him and for this reason had donated everything he had with the aim of giving Colombia an international outlook on art (see WHO).

[2] His bond with Italy which he loved so much that he considered it his second home, and as I wrote above, a suitable place to share periods full of intimate and affectionate encounters with his children and grandchildren was achieved with the donation of the work to the Municipality of Pietrasanta The warrior, bronze nude of over four meters located in Piazza Matteotti from 1992 (see WHO).

[3] «I am someone who protests against modern painting, but in any case I use what is hidden or behind it: the ironic game and what it means is now recognized by everyone. I paint figurative and realist, but with a strict sense of fidelity to nature; I will never give a brush stroke that is not a description of something real: a mouth, of the hills, a tree. But what I describe is the reality found by me. It could be formulated this way: I make a realist description of an unrealistic reality" (see WHO).

[4] L'argentina Maria Traba (1930-1983) Writer, art critic and important figure of the avant-garde of the seventies, she was a decisive scholar in the recognition and credibility of Colombian and South American artists of the last century. The theoretical work carried out on the works of Fernando Botero was the first artistic critical examination that supported the artist's work so as to act as a calling card for presenting himself at national and international exhibitions. The intellectual described Fernando Botero's art as a "Renaissance of stone" for his conception of the block of forms: «they pushed Botero towards monsters that represented a challenge to beauty and logic, consequently the opinion of the public which requires these two "theological" virtues of art (logic and beauty) however insignificant the figures may be in certain cases (are needed by the public) to give approval to an artist and his art, but the art that challenges if it is true can strike to the point of horror but will never go unnoticed. No one can fail to recognize the scandal caused by the enormous figures as well as the perplexity aroused by the incongruent actions that the monstrous figures carried out surrounded by an innocent gigantism in a suspicious immobility or a congregational dynamism leading Botero's art to impose itself in the cultural environment » (see WHO) [free translation by the author of this article with the updated critical opinion of the art critics who in 1961 he formulated this judgment only on the artist's pictorial works, ignoring all the subsequent sculpture work that had not yet been undertaken by the master]

[5] On several occasions when they asked the Maestro the reason for the very high price of his works, he himself explained that he had always wanted to do something local and specific but with honesty and this, not only did he generate empathy from the general public but also from collectors or art lovers who in the end paid generously above all for his honesty.

[6] For the anthropologist Maria Fernanda Escallón, Fernando Botero's plastic art began to be realized from 1975 when he took up residence in Pietrasanta where he made the transition from painting to sculpture. Just as if the entire universe of monumental figures developed in the paintings found an echo in the statuary three-dimensionality fueled by the imaginary richness coming from the painting that gave the ideas, solutions and possibilities. Fernando Botero's sculpture dismantles the pictorial structure to synthesize the form in the unity of the sculpture (see WHO)

[7] The Master's works can be grouped into these groups: religious with Madonnas, holy devils, ecclesiastics, nuns and nuns; that of the great masters in which he revisits the main works of Jan Van Eyck, Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Andrea Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, Caravaggio, The Grego, Velazquez, etc. ..; that of still and living lifes with animals and especially the voluminous sculptures of recent decades; that of the erotic with nudes and sexual practices, especially brothel scenes; that of politicians, prima donnas and soldiers; and finally those made by people in general or imagined as family members, self-portraits, art sellers and collectors, toreri.

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