Crazy social media, Catholics on the barricades against Achille Lauro: histrionic, provocative, nonconformist, at the end of the performance on the Ariston stage on the notes of "Sunday", tattooed bare chest and black latex pants, the artist staged a car -baptism pouring water on the face from a shell.
A "painful performance" according to the bishop of Sanremo, Monsignor Antonio Suetta, convinced that the singer has "profaned the sacred signs of the Catholic faith, evoking the gesture of Baptism in an insipid and desecrating context". And it calls into question Rai, which should not "allow such situations".
"No desire to convey transgressions", replies the director of Rai1 Stefano Coletta. "I want to believe in the goodness of Achille Lauro, who declared that he made that gesture as a message to his mother" on his birthday. And Amadeus also defends the artist.
In this way the frictions with the Catholic world are renewed which already last year marked the performances of the singer, then a regular guest of the festival: in particular, the staging of a punk rock wedding with a gay kiss and Fiorello with the crown of thorns. Even then Monsignor Suetta had risen, who today says: "Just pay the Rai license fee".
In the same vein, the non-profit organization Pro Vita, which points the finger at "the national festival of anti-Christian blasphemy, despite 360 million Christians persecuted and discriminated against in the world precisely because of that baptism that Achille Lauro vilified for pure sensationalism".
He does not mention the performance, but on Twitter Cardinal Angelo Ravasi, an affectionate spectator of Sanremo, underlines that "Baptism is the most beautiful and magnificent of God's gifts". Lauro instead defends Don Carmelo La Magra, former parish priest of Lampedusa, and currently a priest in Racalmuto (Agrigento): "But is it possible that all the catholicity comes out when Achille Lauro sings? Get scandalized by something else and give you a laugh every now and then!".
L'Osservatore Romano, called into question last night by Fiorello, invites us to consider that "wanting to be transgressive at all costs, the singer has referred to the Catholic imagination. Nothing new", argues the director Andrea Monda. "There has not been a more transgressive message in history than that of the Gospel. From this point of view we will hardly forget the recitation of the Our Father, on his knees, by a great rock artist like David Bowie. There are no longer the transgressors of a time".
Coletta invokes the "freedom of expression" that "every art admits. So - he reiterates - we welcome with regret that the Church reads the exhibition as an affront to the sacrament of baptism". Amadeus also sides with the singer: "I respect the bishop's opinion, but I - a very believer - did not feel disturbed by Achille Lauro's performance. An artist must be able to express himself freely, otherwise young people will not only move away from the festival, but also from the church ".
The court of social media, as always, is divided between innocentists and guilty: under the hashtag #boicottasanremo are joined the critical voices about Achille Lauro, no vax angry with Fiorello (and his "bionic" arm for "the fault of the microchip, of the graphene and strong powers "), users who point the finger at the Ariston at 100% capacity" while elsewhere people lose their jobs, cannot enter shops and have lost all right to mobility and access to services " But there are those who reply: "the hashtag #boicottaSanremo providing us pure cinema is the confirmation that this festival has started very well".
(Unioneonline / vl)