Gulls and Ravens Hunt the Pope's Doves -- Of Signs and Symbols

(Vatican) Last Sunday, 26 January, Pope Francis released two doves at the Angelus in St. Peter's Square. A tradition. Since Paul VI, is that every year on the last Sunday in January a meeting with Catholic Action will take place.  The Vaticanist Antonio Margheriti Martino watched the scene, which was brought to his attention by a reader.  At first he took the hint to be exaggerated, but "if I want to read the incident symbolically, he has alerted me to something." Here is his report:

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Gulls and Ravens Kill the Pigeons of the Pope: Ominous Foreshadowing?

The walls of the Apostolic Palace with the apartments of the Pope, his home, are blessed by the centuries-long presence of the Vicar of Christ, those men with such responsibility, that they are not enviable. Walls which know the history of the world by the sighs of the Popes. The walls, which we can rightly assume that they are specially protected because they involve Peter himself.

But these walls have grown like any other walls this year.  The grace seems to have left them, together with the Pope. The Vicar of Christ no longer lives there and the animals seem to sense it and so we have witnessed a sad scene that provoked horror and tears among the people in the square.

Doves as a Symbol of Peace

Italian TV showed the pictures in direct transmission, the annual flight of white doves as a symbol of peace, who rise from the window for the Angelus prayer in the Pope's apartment. Or rather we should say today, from the window, which once belonged to the apartment of the Pope, but, as we know, is now abandoned and uninhabited. But we are doing this just once more as if it were all normal. The white dove is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. So the peace symbol has  very special significance so from a Christian point of view.