Pope Francis shows naivety over tradition of Vatican’s nativity scene

After a year of death, Italians were looking to the old traditions for comfort. Instead they got modernistic sculptures of Mary, Jesus and Joseph and an astronaut.

An astronaut figurine stands among the nativity scene display at the Vatican. Picture: Reuters

Someone who took his name from Francis of Assisi, who saw the embarrassment of the City of Rome’s giant annual Christmas tree as it became a broken travesty in recent years, and who has lived in Italy as it became the European nation worst affected by COVID-19, should have known — you don’t mess with the nativity.

Pope Francis and the Vatican have been assailed on all sides since the life-size nativity — presepe or presepio in Italian — was unveiled in St Peter’s square, revealing modernistic sculptures of Mary, Jesus and Joseph, as well as a Roman centurion who looked like a “horned creature” and an astronaut in a space suit.

Critics of the Catholic Church and Christmas traditions have mocked the display variously as a Lego version of Darth Vader or junk yard sale while traditionalists have attacked the Pope for using cold and threatening figures instead of the warm, reassuring familiar icons.

The Vatican’s defence has been that the annual display, which started 40 years ago, now comes from a different region each year and this year it came from the mountainous and remote region of Abruzzo, itself intertwined for centuries with Christmas traditions through shepherds in woollen jerkins and greaves coming to Rome to play bagpipes as snow covers their pastures.

It also quoted Pope Francis from last year when he observed that over the years people add figures to presepe to reflect ordinary life. Apart from the holy family, some shepherds, the three kings and animals beyond the ox and the donkey characters have been added, including blacksmiths, women carrying water and wood, bakers, millers, camel drivers, a trout fisherman called Michele and the “duck” lady.

All of this is true. It is also true that the ancient Abruzzo region combines reverence for Etruscan history through its symbol of the marble funereal warrior of Capestrano and celebration of modern art with the exhibition centre designed by Italy’s most famous modern artist, Mimmo Paladino.

A traditional Italian presepio or nativity scene.

It is also true this year’s Vatican presepio comes from Castelli, a ceramic centre in Abruzzo since the 1600s that continues to produce its own style of ceramics, and which has been displayed in Rome, Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv since it was created in the 1960s and 70s — hence the astronaut.

But in a year of death and anxiety, Italians were looking to the old traditions for comfort. During Christmas and Easter young Italian men, who may not darken the doorway of a church, will vie for the honour of being in the Christmas pageant or to carry the statue of the Madonna on Easter morning.

While Pope Francis said it “does not matter how the nativity scene is arranged: it can always be the same or it can change from year to year”, he missed the centrality of the presepio to Christmas, family, tradition and culture in Italy.

The presepio is an 800-year-old tradition that sweeps through high art to church devotions and down to the humble family Christmas display that pre-dates Christmas trees and the US-style Santa Claus.

It was in fact St Francis of Assisi who started the presepio in 1223 in the village of Greccio using real people, real animals and a real grotto to encourage devotion to the birth of Christ and the family.

By 1300 there were marble depictions of the scene with a donkey and an ox accompanied by a few shepherds and, later, the three wise men. The most famous is still in the Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome.

King Charles II of Naples commissioned a “monumentale presepio” from the greatest artists of the day in 1750 which is on display year round in the church of Cosma and Damiano on the edge of the Roman Forum.

Naples remains the centre of magnificently hand-carved nativity scenes depicting 18th century Italian village life, although the coronavirus has emptied the famous artisan street of Via San Gregorio Armeno normally thronged by collectors, shoppers and sightseers.

But it’s the family presepio that rules Italian hearts as cribs of all sorts appear from December 8 including plain terra cotta, hand-painted and moulded clay, wooden carvings and, most common now, plastic figures of all shapes, sizes and grades from simple plastic to collector’s standard models.

In our Aussie-Italo household there’s an Italian scene that fills half the dining room with flowing fountains, a fire for the blacksmith and dozens of figures collected over the years, including three camel-mounted Magi that arrive at the manger on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany and the presentation of the gifts.

Even my youngest grandson, three-year-old Rafael, knows the tradition is that the baby Jesus is not in the manger until Christmas.

Rafa’s favourite figure among the 100 or so collected over 30 years, including miniature presepe from Spain, Poland, Peru, Germany, the Galapagos Islands and Chile, is “Biff” the border collie, the most recent addition.

But, he also understands that a dog and shepherds, like a maremma and an Abruzzi shepherd, go together as part of the reassurance of the nativity scene, and that’s what the Vatican missed.