{"id":57147,"date":"2026-06-17T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=57147"},"modified":"2026-06-17T22:36:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T01:36:59","slug":"raising-our-gaze-rome-and-the-power-of-symbols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/raising-our-gaze-rome-and-the-power-of-symbols\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising our gaze: Rome and the power of symbols"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There was a photograph that was never published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meeting between Pope Leo XIV and Bad Bunny was confirmed. The media reported on it. It took place at the Bernab\u00e9u, one of the most media-saturated stadiums in the world, a secular and global space where everything is documented and nothing escapes mobile phones. Yet the image everyone expected to see never appeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an era obsessed with documenting everything, the absence of a photograph ended up becoming news. And the relevant question is not why we never saw the image. The question is what meaning its absence produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That question leads to a deeper one, which the Pope\u2019s visit to Spain<\/a> answered with remarkable precision: the Catholic Church<\/a> remains one of the most sophisticated institutions in the world when it comes to constructing and managing symbolic power. Not because it controls politics. Not because it controls the media. But because it is still capable of producing meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visit was far more than a pastoral tour. It was an exercise in strategic communication on a global scale. And the key to that exercise lay not in what was shown, but in who decided what would be shown. The Vatican set the agenda. It determined what was included, what was not, with whom, and in what setting. Democratic governments, equipped with all the resources of the state, ceded narrative control to an institution without an army, without significant territory, and without economic power comparable to that of the great powers. And they did so willingly. Even gratefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is not communications management. It is symbolic power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long before social media, the Catholic Church already understood that the way a message is communicated can be just as important as the message itself. Every setting, every route, every meeting, and every silence conveyed meaning throughout this visit. The absent photograph did as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madrid provided the first act, and it proved more complex than it initially appeared. Over the course of two days, Leo XIV addressed different audiences using distinctly different registers: authorities at the Royal Palace, young people in Plaza de Lima beside the Bernab\u00e9u, one million faithful gathered for the Corpus Christi Mass in Cibeles, representatives of culture and business at the Movistar Arena, and finally the Congress of Deputies in a historic session. It was not a visit. It was a communication campaign with carefully segmented audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The address before Parliament was the most substantial and revealing piece of the Madrid leg of the trip. Leo XIV became the first Pontiff to speak before the Congress of Deputies. He criticized the constant disqualification of political opponents, called for a culture of reciprocity, defended the protection of life from conception to natural death, and placed the protection of the unborn and that of migrants within the same moral framework. No one could fully appropriate the message. Pedro S\u00e1nchez and the leaders of the Spanish right shared the same stage, in the same room, before the same figure, without either side interpreting it as its own defeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a country where political polarization is so intense that leaders rarely appear together without it becoming a story of conflict, that is soft power in its purest form: the ability that Joseph Nye defined as influencing through attraction, legitimacy, and the construction of meaning, without the need to impose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barcelona offered the second act, and perhaps the one most laden with symbolism. The day began in a women\u2019s prison and ended at the Sagrada Fam\u00edlia. Between those two settings lies much of the symbolic grammar that characterizes Vatican communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addressing the inmates, the Pope said something that acquires a weight inside a prison that no speech can manufacture: the mistakes of one\u2019s life do not determine a person\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sagrada Fam\u00edlia deserves special attention. Antoni Gaud\u00ed died exactly one hundred years ago, struck by a tram and mistaken for a beggar because no one recognized him lying on the ground. A century later, the Pope, the King and Queen, the Prime Minister, and the President of the Generalitat watched as a cross illuminated the highest tower of the tallest church in the world, while drones traced Gaud\u00ed\u2019s face above Barcelona alongside a phrase that summarized his legacy: first love, then technique. The epic project, 144 years in the making, found its symbolic consecration that day. And it was the Pope who presided over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That day in Barcelona revealed the grammar of contrasts that defines the Vatican\u2019s communication method. The prison and the basilica. Invisibility and spectacle. These are not contradictory elements within the Church\u2019s symbolic logic; they are paired tensions that generate meaning, and in that tension produce significance that no political statement could equal. Roland Barthes argued that modern societies construct mythologies through seemingly ordinary signs. In Barcelona, several of them converged simultaneously: redemption, identity, creation, and mercy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Canary Islands provided the third act. And it proved to be the symbolic culmination of the entire journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pope arrived at the port of Arguinegu\u00edn, known for years as the \u201cport of shame\u201d after nearly four thousand migrants were crowded there during the pandemic in 2020. He renamed it the \u201cport of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gesture appears simple, but it contains a sophisticated communicative operation. The facts remained unchanged. The boats continued to arrive. Political tensions persisted. What changed was the meaning attributed to the place. Leo XIV did not challenge the facts. He contested the meaning of the facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before Red Cross volunteers, Maritime Rescue captains, victims of human trafficking, and migrant families, he said what European governments could scarcely say at that moment: human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border. The visit took place the day before the European Migration and Asylum Pact came into force, tightening reception conditions. The Vatican knew the date. Pedro S\u00e1nchez welcomed the Pope at the foot of the aircraft stairs. The Minister of Inclusion described the visit as an endorsement of the government\u2019s migration policies. A Canary Islands member of parliament publicly asked whether it was possible to applaud the Pope\u2019s message and then continue acting as authorities were acting. The Pope did not intervene directly in politics. Yet politics ended up reorganizing itself around his message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo XIV projects a communication style worthy of attention in its own right. The first American Pope in history, yet deeply influenced by the Latin American experience, multilingual, comfortable before the media, and willing to engage with complex issues without apparent fear of controversy. At the Royal Palace he spoke with institutional solemnity. In Plaza de Lima, among young people, he described himself as just another Madrile\u00f1o and admitted that he had not memorized his speech either. In Arguinegu\u00edn he bowed before the dignity of those arriving in small migrant boats. Every register, every gesture, and every choice of setting communicated something that no official statement could have conveyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the centuries, the Church has demonstrated a distinctive ability: it usually changes its language before it changes its doctrine. It did so after the invention of the printing press, with radio, with television, and with the internet. Now it appears to be doing so once again. While governments, corporations, and celebrities compete daily for attention through an overproduction of content, the Vatican continues to operate according to a different logic: selection. Influence depends not only on how much is communicated, but on what is chosen to be communicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rome no longer commands armies or controls territories. The former capital of an empire that ruled through force continues to occupy a central place in the global conversation thanks to entirely different instruments: symbols, rituals, narratives, and moral authority. When the Pope travels, the world still watches. It is a remarkable historical paradox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For centuries, power has been associated with the ability to impose decisions. Leo XIV\u2019s visit to Spain reminded us of another form of influence: the ability to define meanings. Empires govern territories. Enduring institutions govern imaginations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rome lost its legions, its emperors, and its provinces centuries ago. What it never lost was the ability to produce symbols capable of crossing borders, cultures, and generations. Perhaps that is why a photograph that was never published ended up saying so much. Because, two thousand years later, Rome still masters one of the oldest and most difficult arts of human communication: deciding which story deserves to be told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The photograph that never appeared revealed the true power behind Leo XIV\u2019s visit to Spain: the Vatican\u2019s ability to construct meaning even through absence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":897,"featured_media":57107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17136],"tags":[17180],"gps":[],"class_list":["post-57147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-comunicacion-en","tag-ideas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/897"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57149,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57147\/revisions\/57149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57147"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=57147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}