Van K. Brock
vbrock@english.fsu.edu

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Giordano Bruno, above Il Campo dei Fiori, where the Church burned him. ...405 years later, the Cardinals name as Pope one who purged priests with a theology to better life for the poor, as Christ's teachings would have, one who just days earlier honored Cardinal Law, defying the myriad victims of Law, who repeatedly assigned pedophile priests -- known predators -- to parishes where their passions were kept hushed, allowing new innocents to be abused by those sworn to serve one who did not mean rape in saying, "suffer the little children to come unto me.. "

Benedict XVI at Auschwitz: no mention of Vatican's silence about Auschwitz or uses of the poor by privileged Catholics. ...."Of 32 former inmates of Auschwitz who talked briefly with the Pope in the courtyard around the Wall of Death, where prisoners were executed, there was only a single Jewish survivor. He is Henryk Mandelbaum and he is Polish....
.... On his arrival at the Birkenau crematoria the Pope said a short prayer in German--the only moment in the four days he had spoken his native tongue out of deference to his Polish hosts.
.. . "Lord, you are the God of Peace, you are Peace: a heart that seeks conflict will not understand you. A mind that is oriented towards violence cannot comprehend you..
. . ."Grant to all who live in harmony that they may continue to live in peace, and grant to those who are divided the gift of reconciliation." (adapted from BBC News)

Flavia loves this Dickinson poem--& mine for Giordano Bruno, below, as I hope he would.........

....................................................
Ample make this bed. _____....____Be its mattress straight, ..... Make this bed with awe; __...._.....__Be its pillow round;............... In it wait till judgment break,.....Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Excellent and fair . +++++++++++..Interrupt this ground.

..........................................................Emily.Dickinson

Bruno above the Campo dei Fiori, Rome...............Bruno aflame, AD 1600

Bruno in his habit and hooded head,
bowed down toward the Campo dei Fiori
below, his thousand children nightly,
sitting and standing, around his shrine,
knowing only or perhaps not even caring
that he was burned alive for being right
in a world that believed in the perfect truth
of wrong. But they do not see him above them.
He grasps his book, eyes closed, musing
deeply on a world that does not care
to read, to see the perfect forms
and motions of the world in which he is
the fulcrum and never will be the center. 

He was made toast for saying the round earth
spun around the sun, and the people raised
his form above the field of flowers, the church
cried out to have it taken down. But the people 
cried, No, No, No—why ever. He was their own.

By day the square fills with fruit and vegetables,
fish, fowl, game, and dressed flesh of animals.
Flowers, crafts, hats, shoes, shirts,
and bags of all shapes to hold them all.
Now around the year his children gather,
children of all ages, but mostly young,
mostly with a cup of beer, flask of wine,
a plastic cocktail glass, bottle of acqua
frizzante. There are no monkish habits
or cowls. Most wear body tight shirts, shorts.
Simple. Black and white. I watch them.
They are here. They are sure they are having fun.
It is the necessity of the place.
Bruno watches them. His cowl over his eyes.
They are his and he is theirs.