Who am I to judge. A phrase that has been around the international media: spoken by the present Pope, Francis, and he was referring to a demand made to him during a return trip by plane from a journalist about the pedophile scandals and violence perpetrated by several priests, cardinals and clergy around the world. The Pope’s response was out of context and was seen immediately as an opening of the same on issues related to homosexuality, while, in reality, was nothing but a distancing in relation to those facts of abuse and violence against minors by some officiating Catholic worship. Who am I to judge wants to be, as always in the Nicola Mette’s performance / action , a moment of reflection and social commentary.
Will present wearing the cardinal’s robe, a deep red that expresses for its length and its majestic brought the ecclesiastical pageantry, the pomp behind which some members, even prominent, the clergy were able to commit acts of violence and abuse in of minors, some have gone unpunished, others were amnestied with impunity. Who am I to judge you want to be also a pure irony sentence and cynical attitude towards those who often rises to the one who condemns homosexuality as abhorrent form of existence, as a disease, even as a way to weed out even through elimination psychological and physical, we recall the haunting and terrifying statements of Don Massimiliano Pusceddu, “gays are enemies of God and must die”, preaching hatred, while taking clemency attitudes in regard to acts of perversion and pedophilia against unarmed and innocent figures. In 2015 Don Silvio Foddis urged to use the flamethrower against gays for a picture he had seen in a pride where there were two naked boys.
A true virus in Sardinia that is wandering not only among the priests who homily instigate people against the LGBTI community.
In 2012 in Sindia (NU) in Sardinia in the performance / action “Liberdade Paridade Sessualidade” the artist has been the subject of criticism in the homily by the priest and was teased by some people of the same country with the written to the ground before his house and in the middle of the entrance of the village street: “SHAME! NICOLA METTE YOU ARE THE SHAME OF OUR TOWN, GAY “.
Radio Maria itself(2016) took a picture from the internet, which published as a citation in an article from the newspaper “Il Fatto Quotidiano”, of the performance / action “Quod Amor Coniunxit Not Separat Lex”, realized in Milan, without citing the source, speaking evil of Cirinnà law and Civil Unions, saying that, if the law had been approved, the homosexual couples should marry as dressed one in a wedding suit and the other one with white wedding dress, completely distorting the meaning. In the performance, however, the dress meant the unity of the people, making fun of white used that gown and carried to the altar by women deprived of their virginity. Cases of homosexuality in the clergy are, as normal, existing and persistent: all this goes unnoticed in a veneer of hypocrisy and of a system, the clerical, which often allows himself to interfere in the institutional world: we read in fact, the refusal of the Vatican State in the UN approval of the Directive for a moratorium against the criminal conviction, also including the capital, towards LGBTI people, or undue influence by the clergy themselves in parliamentary debates, most often Italians, for the extension of LGBTI rights. Love should be a commandment of the Gospel and love should have neither borders nor limitations, or, even less, conditions: the universal love is daily demeaned and insulted by those who instigate hatred only against those who are considered “different”. Nicola Mette will be on public clothed with a long robe and tell, almost like a mantra, the fateful words, “Who am I to judge”, instilling in these not only wonder at the masterful stage presence, customary for clerical circles, but also for facial expression and gestures, gestural and performative that cause it to detect the contradiction that you live and breathe within the church hierarchy.
A new performance / action will join the many that already the artist has been able and willing to lead about, endorsing even more as the aesthetic quality of this artistic expression can ensure that significant useful to denounce a confessional fundamentalism, sinister and inhuman, intolerant and violent.
Nicola Mette will be accompanied by a young man dressed as a priest who will hold the heavy robe, even in this indeed, you can find almost allegorically the scope of a hierarchical, top-down, male-dominated and sexist, figures submissive to the total uncritical service of a millennial organization which in most cases makes with profit the basis of its power and with terror and hate the basis of their own propaganda, and thus of its hegemonic power. ‘
