Our Giorgio Comaschi interviewed the archbishop of Bologna, cardinal Matteo Zuppi. You will find inside the questions and answers. It is an interview that is part of a series: Comaschi, Bolognese in love with Bologna, is gradually questioning a series of national-level personalities, but born here or in any case rooted here: thus emerges, from every portrait, that way of being that makes anyone who comes from the two towers immediately recognize. First Stefano Benni, then Gianni Morandi, Romano Prodi, Riccardo Bigon, Claudio Fenucci, Pierferdinando Casini, and now Zuppi. Indeed Szuppi, as it comes from the lips of the people here
In fact, Zuppi is Roman, but he has been in Bologna for some years, and he has certainly been infected by it. But he too has infected us. And how, if he has infected us.
Comaschi, who knows how to “read” people from the first meeting, asked him to do the interview sitting on the steps of Saint Petroniusin an hour in which piazza Maggiore it is full of people. And already here, the news. Can you imagine certain eminences – or even, more simply, certain reverends – where they would have wanted to do the interview? In some hall of the Curia, surrounded by inspectors in cassocks, and perhaps demanding to know, first, in writing, the questions. But Zuppi no. He speaks sitting on the steps like a university or any Japanese: he knows that people recognize him and could bother him, but people, for him, are the next. Not an indistinct mass: one by one.
Who is the priest? Comaschi asked him at one point. And yes, the priest is the one you read in the answer, the mediator between heaven and earth, the witness of Christ. But the priest that humanity needed, after a long time in which at least a part of the Church (the hierarchy) seemed distant and sometimes even icy, is the one who is among the people; he is the one who makes true what the gospel asks, and that is, whoever wants to be first must make himself last.
At one point Giorgio asked him if he will become president of the Italian bishops, as is rumored, or even pope, as many predict. Zuppi replied by quoting Biffi: a priest who wants to become a bishop must be hospitalized for mental problems; let alone one who wanted to be pope. So be it. But one thing is sure. If Zuppi really were to become pope (and we would all be happy about it) he would continue to be a Don Matteo sitting on the steps.