I am delighted to see that the National Gallery in London has put on a free show (on until July 30) celebrating the life and legacy of St Francis of Assisi. Our review, on page 72, highlights how lucky we are to have Gabriele Finaldi as director of the National Gallery: “Finaldi really gets religious subjects”, which is why the Francis encountered in the show is the “the root-and-branch Francis who padded the Umbrian hills calling sinners to repentance and conversion of life”.
It is a refreshing change from so many exhibitions today that try to avoid religion at all costs. It has also got me excited about the next Herald walking pilgrimage to Assisi that I will be going on at the end of September, led by our official pilgrim guide, James Jeffrey. The walk will be along the Via di Francesco pilgrimage route, covering 64 miles. It will start in Terni, about 61 miles to the north of Rome, and we will walk into Assisi on St Francis’s feast day on October 4. Anybody wanting to join our Herald pilgrim band: please email me.
I am sure that the former National Gallery director, Kenneth Clark, who converted to Catholicism on his deathbed in 1983, would approve of the Francis of Assisi exhibition which also presents the saint as “radical Francis”. This is certainly the way that the Holy Father in Rome has taken to interpret Francis, after choosing his name as Pope.
One could also add that Pope Francis has taken on the cause of the “anti-traditional” Francis, which is why we commissioned Christian Adams to draw the new Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Fra’ John Dunlap, with the Pope stepping on his robe, for our cover. The good news is that although it was first thought that the order’s sovereignty was being eroded by Pope Francis, his delegate, Cardinal Tomasi, has reassured members that the order remains sovereign.
But as our main leader argues, there are reasons to be optimistic with the election of Fra’ John as the 81st Grand Master on May 3 – not least the fact he was elected by a unanimous vote. Hopefully his appointment will herald a new chapter of harmony and healing for the order, which has been through a period of unrest ever since the last but one Grand Master, the late Fra’ Matthew Festing, fell out with his German chancellor, Fra’ Albrecht von Boeselager.
This ugly power struggle – nominally about distribution of condoms, but really a clash of personalities with different visions for the order – created an opportunity for Pope Francis to intervene and exercise control. The order never really recovered from this spat and the new constitution put in place has created a different order, with Fra’ John being the first Grand Master without noble “proofs”.
He was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1957, studied at Nice University and has been a member of the New York State Bar and the Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller law firm. His religious vocation came in the mid-1980s when he volunteered to work with patients suffering from AIDS at the Cardinal Cooke Medical Center in Harlem, New York. His 30 years of hospital volunteer work thus makes him supremely qualified to follow in the tradition of other Grand Masters going back 800 years when the order’s princes looked after poor and sick pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land.
In his first address to the order as Grand Master, Fra’ John spoke of the importance of its motto, Tuitio Fidei et Obsequium Pauperum – defence of the faith and service to the poor. So by virtue of his hospital work, Fra’ John is very much not a departure from tradition but rather a modern extension of it. I have met Fra’ John a few times and I have also eaten in his excellent Italian restaurant on East 52nd Street in New York, La Villetta.
When we were having a drink on the terrace of the Kolbe Hotel before the CNEWA dinner in Rome (see Chesterton on page 55), he explained that he came to co-own the restaurant by divine chance after the restaurant space unexpectedly became available. Now that he is living at the Palazzo Malta on the Via Condotti in Rome, it will be interesting to see if he imports any new Roman recipes to the menu in Manhattan.
And finally, I am pleased to announce that the Herald is now on sale on newsstands at WHSmith – so look out for us instore.
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