There are images that do not belong to the collective imagination. One of them is Pope Leo XIV calling his Chicago bank and not being recognized. A scene that has something cinematic about it. He rhe diligently answers the security questions, provides all the requested data, but the employee remains inflexible: “You must go to the branch in person.” And then that figure, destined to guide over a billion Catholics, suddenly finds himselfand identical to all of us, held hostage by passwords, PINs, OTP codes and automatic procedures.
The phrase attributed to him, «I gave you all the answers to your security questions», is perfect in its contemporary melancholy. This is what made the audience smile: not the Pope in difficulty, but recognizing themselves in that scene.
Giulio Treccani
The success of this scene, which took place last summer, comes from here: seeing the Pope trapped in the same bureaucratic liturgies that consume our days. Not the distant and monumental Pontiff, but a man forced to repeat passwords, PINs and security questions to a voice that, even when faced with the evidence of having the Pope himself on the phone, continues to answer: “You have to go to the branch.”
It is an image that reminds us of the surprisingly everyday one of Pope Francis when, in September 2015, he went to a glasses shop: moments that restore humanity to figures normally perceived as unattainable.
After all, rather than laughing at what happened to Pope Leo, we smile at ourselves: of the call center that doesn’t listen, of the app that crashes, of the technology that promises simplicity and produces new labyrinths. A little Kafkaesque tale of our time.
