A photo of the cosmatesque mosaics on the floor of the central aisle in the nave of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where Cardinal Zuppi was once the parish priest. Within an overarching design pattern, there are irregularities in the pattern which seem to be random, that is, irregularities which seem to reflect the free will of the mosaicist(s) who actually set the colored pieces into place — mostly following a strictly pre-set design, but sometimes, seemingly, making a free choice to alter the design…. the colors in this photo are not as bright as in real life (the triangles are white, red and green), but if you look closely you will find some of these irregularities
Letter #38, 2024, Thursday, October 17: Cardinal Zuppi in Moscow
Here is a brief report (from three days ago, October 14) that I intended to send out immediately, but could not due to time constraints — not a moment free.
So, I send it out today, to remind myself, and all of you, that efforts are continuing daily, after almost three years, to bring an end to the bloody war in Ukraine, and that the Vatican and the Pope, and in particular Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, head of the Italian bishops’ conference and archbishop of Bologna, a lovely city north of Rome, are thinking, talking, traveling, keeping lines of communication open.
Zuppi, was in the 1990s the parish priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere, my favorite church in Rome, and I used to bring my boys there on Sunday morning when they were little. I noticed then that the mosaic designs on the marvelous and world-famous Cosmatesque floor have “irregularities,” so that the pattern is unpredictable — two red, two green, two red, two green, three red, three green, two red, two green… I concluded that, within a larger design ordered by an artist or architect, the workers who laid out the thousands of colored mosaic pieces, were free to alter the pattern, making it more alive and striking than it would have been if entirely predictable. Perhaps our own freedom is something like that.
Now, I usually attend a Byzantine liturgy there on Sunday evenings at 7 pm, a sung Mass in the Italian language but following the text of the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the same liturgy which is used in the East, by the eastern-rite Catholic Churches, and by the Orthodox Churches. I have spoken with Cardinal Zuppi and respect his evident honesty and good faith in attempting to carry out the “mission impossible” assigned to him by the Pope with kindness and grace.
—RM
Vatican Peace Envoy Meets Russian Foreign Minister in Moscow (link)
By The Moscow Times
October 14, 2024
Pope Francis’ Ukraine peace envoy met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Monday in what the Vatican said was a follow-up talk about efforts to bring home children forcibly taken to Russia and prisoner exchanges.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi was expected to “assess further efforts to facilitate the reunification of Ukrainian children with their families and the exchange of prisoners, with a view to achieving the much-hoped-for peace,” the Vatican’s news website said before the meeting [link].
Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a short statement noting that Lavrov and Zuppi discussed “humanitarian cooperation around the conflict in Ukraine.”
Patriarch Kirill, a staunch supporter of President Vladimir Putin and the offensive in Ukraine, is not expected to meet Zuppi, according to the adviser to the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Patriarch Kirill met Zuppi in June 2023 on his first visit to Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in early 2022.
Pope Francis appointed Zuppi, the head of Italy’s Bishops’ Conference, in 2023 to lead a peace mission to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. The cardinal also visited Beijing, Kyiv and Washington as part of a diplomatic tour.
[End of report]
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