Merely two days after I turned seven, the Catholic world turned on its head. Then a first-grader, I was not paying attention when fumata bianca pillowed out of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, a given granted my craving for flesh (wink!) on Fridays in Lent. But the more grown nations of the Earth, regardless of sect, creed or mere belief in any god, watched.
In rapid fashion, the conclave produced its victor, swapping the fire’s cloud-darkening sulfur for pine resin — informally anointing the successor and perhaps foreshadowing his daily wardrobe for the next decade. Tufts of smoke barely visible to onlookers were seen within the half-mile radius of the piazza and felt in the hearts of the Faithful, without regard to propinquity. Every civilized man knew: Francis was the Bishop of Rome and the Pope of Earth.
The first non-European in over a millennium to seal the Papacy would be observed by thousands of pious on la frontera in Ciudad Juarez, unifying both sides of the fence under God at the dawn of Trumpism. He washed the feet of Rome’s mobster youth, willing himself to the morbid ends that prison visitors oft gamble with. He railed against traditionalist dogma to draw trans women, homosexuals like myself and migrants of various convictions into Mass. And he modernized an otherwise floundering Church in the aftermath of sex scandals — global, permanent cancers of carnal guilt that the Vatican’s elite blatantly eschewed for years on end.
It is not ballsy to suggest that he may have saved us from another cancerous “reformation,” or more frankly, an exile en masse. Had the Holy Father withheld from humility and opted for the cushy Dolce garbs, even purebred Catholics like myself may have followed suit. God only knows how the indifferent biannual Mass attendees would have reacted.
At some point, my era of passive attendance came to an end. I was more mature, more pious and grounded in my convictions. Disillusioned, I watched my peers self-sort into callous irreverence at the advent of secular “liberationist” politics and concluded that the diversity initiatives I founded in secondary were hotbeds for factional race quarrels when all along, the Church was the most unifying object in the eyes of even the most fratty grimesters of whom I called my peers.
But in my Kotlikoffian waiting period (please laugh), I was most perceptive of the Highest man that I shared a name with. Whilst only his reputation remains at this hour of renewal, there was one piece of him, so entrenched that had never left me, and never will: his manners.
Be it hard to conceive, especially after a video resurfaced disparaging Francis for gently swatting himself free from a zealous woman’s iron grasp, it was likely not the Lord, but the man’s refinement which informed him to reconcile with her over bread; she was a stranger to most, but a sister to him. Needless to say, his virtues will be hard to replicate. Then again, who is a Pope if not one to be aspired to? As my colleague Paul Caruso M.P.A. ‘26 posited last week, the lack of a “moral … unifying figure” in this subarctic Ithacan arena feels just as cold as Second Dam in the glacial months and crueler than a burnt Geek Bar to the tonsils. Attempt either at your own risk, that is, if you believe in fun (more on that by the semester’s close).
So if ever such a prophetic hope were to be fruitful, let it be now. Yet can we truly expect a Cornellian so universally loved, as we too await the Savior? That, I am neither ordained nor enlightened enough to say. I am sure Mr. Caruso has some candidates to float with regard to the former. But I can attest to this: manners matter.
Like the big-boned squirrels to Morrison’s widely discarded vegan chocolate cakes or a Zeus worker to her third menthol of the hour, us students are addicted to ignorance. When we divert our attention from practical, altruistic habits like keeping our AirPods out of the ear canal when tenured professors instill their wisdom to all of Alice Statler Hall, we detract from the very nuances that keep our social capital in stable order. When standing in front of an arriving elevator and thrusting oneself into the chamber before an egress becomes the status quo, we are perceived less like the prim scholars that set the foundation for our studies today, and more like the ambivalent Average Joe. And when barefoot becomes the bare minimum for some grinding on the already-shrewd carpets of Olin Library, we regress to a stoop of gauche that even Ithaca College students would gawk at.
Under the friction of political toils and academic trials, we have succumbed to the pressures that be. Our campus has never been more divided. But as Christ and Francis both provided, it is through such challenges, when paired with a heaping bump of perseverance, that we may be looked upon with dignity.
Today, we herald the first American of Rome, Leo XIV. But before we dissect the consequences of his Chicago rearing or whether a Costco membership derides the sanctity of the Mitre, we can learn from the man even heretics grew to love. Ave morem, and mind your manners.
Francis Xavier Jaso is a freshman studying Government and Economics in the College of Arts & Sciences. His fortnightly column “A Contrarian’s Calamity” defies normative, dysfunctional campus discourse in the name of reason, hedonism and most notably, satire. He can be reached at fjaso@cornellsun.com.
