Last month the circus came to the Vatican. During Pope Francis’s weekly general audience, magicians, clowns and acrobats performed on the steps of St Peter’s Basilica, and managed to work the Holy Father into the act. A clown twisted balloons into the shape of a giant flower and presented it to the Pope, while a magician made a small table near Francis’s chair levitate. At one point, the Holy Father let a cockatoo perch on his hand.
Vatican Radio reported the Pope’s “unscripted enthusiasm” for the performance. “You are champions of beauty,” he told the circus folk. “You make beauty, and beauty is good for the soul … Beauty brings us closer to God, but behind this spectacle of beauty, how many hours of training there are! Go forward, keep it up!”
But not everyone shared Francis’s enthusiasm. The performers skin-tight costumes and the giant eyeballs that covered the breasts of some of the female acrobats raised eyebrows in Britain and America. LifeSiteNews.com reported that female performers “dressed as cats … did the splits and danced to cheesy music”. In response to the performance, one Twitter user wrote: “I am a married man and this picture is harmful to my state of grace.” Another decried the performance as a “mockery of the Chair of St Peter” (the performance took place on the feast of the Chair of St Peter). And the reporter for LifeSiteNews.com commented that the circus performance seemed “like a strange way to commemorate a Catholic feast day dedicated to the Pope’s authority and sacred duties”.
But Pope Francis likes the circus. During another performance in 2016, Francis cradled a lion cub, and that same year he arranged for 1,000 refugees, prisoners on parole and homeless people to attend a circus staged on the outskirts of Rome. And if recent history is any indication, he’s not the only papal fan of circus acts. Pope St John Paul II and Benedict XVI also welcomed circus performers to the Vatican. Even saints have got in on the act.
For decades acrobats, jugglers, magicians and other circus people have venerated St John Bosco as their patron. Time and again they have petitioned the Vatican to make it official, with a formal pronouncement by the pope naming Don Bosco (as he is popularly known) as the patron saint of circus performers. In 2002 Fr Silvio Mantelli, a priest and amateur magician, took the circus people’s case directly to John Paul II. As a gentle reminder of what he and his friends hoped for, Fr Mantelli presented the pontiff with a magic wand. It didn’t do the trick. Generally speaking, Rome is satisfied with letting the faithful adopt saints as their particular patrons. Only rarely will the pope make such a declaration formally.
John Bosco was the youngest son of a family of peasants who worked the fields outside the city of Turin in northern Italy. He was a bright, athletic boy with an engaging personality. Once, a small travelling circus pitched its tent near the Bosco family’s farm. After just one performance John was mesmerised by the skill and agility of the jugglers and acrobats. For the handful of days the circus remained in the area John spent all his spare time with the performers. They liked the boy, taught him a few tricks, and when he proved that he had talent, they showed him some of their more sophisticated techniques.
After the circus moved on, Bosco put on his own show – juggling, doing some simple sleight-of-hand, and walking a tightrope he strung between two trees. His family was his first audience. Once he had polished his act, he invited some of the local toughs to his show. They liked John’s one-man circus act and his down-to-earth personality.
As they became friends, John found opportunities to suggest that the boys should watch their language, stay away from alcohol, go to Confession and start attending Mass. That was the start of Don Bosco’s vocation, reclaiming and rebuilding the lives of troubled kids.
Meanwhile, Catholics in Britain have proposed a saint for escape artists. That will strike some as a bit odd, but that is one of the pleasures of studying the saints: it reminds us that almost from the beginning of the Church Catholics from every profession, in every condition of life, have wanted their own heavenly guardian. And magicians (some prefer the term “illusionists”) who specialise in escape artistry have chosen St Nicholas Owen as their patron.
Physically, Nicholas was anything but imposing. He stood less than five feet tall. He limped from a broken leg that had been badly set. And he suffered from an incurable hernia in his abdomen, probably caused by heavy lifting while practising his family’s trade – he and his father were skilled carpenters.
The Owens were faithful Catholics during a time when the terms “Catholic” and “traitor” were virtually synonymous. As an adult, Nicholas entered the service of various Jesuit priests who slipped into England to bring the Mass and the sacraments to beleaguered English Catholics. By 1588, Nicholas found a singular way to put his faith into action: he began constructing what were known as “priest holes” in Catholic homes across England. Always working at night and alone so no one else would be implicated, Nicholas built hiding places under stairs, behind wood-panelled walls, beside indoor toilets, even in what appeared to be solid masonry. In these “holes”, priests, their sacred books, their vestments and all the liturgical vessels necessary for Mass could be concealed if priest-hunters came to the door.
Hiding places constructed by St Nicholas can be seen today at Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire (where Nicholas built several hiding places), Broadoaks Manor, Surrey, Boscobel House, Shropshire, Harvington Hall, Worcestershire, Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk and elsewhere. It is believed that Nicholas built dozens of such holes, but in all likelihood, there are more that have yet to be discovered: a tribute to his ingenuity.
In 1606, at Hindlip Hall, Worcestershire, Nicholas was captured by a band of priest-hunters. Robert Cecil, James I’s secretary of state, exulted at the news. “It is incredible,” he wrote later, “how great was the joy caused by his arrest, knowing the great skill of Owen in constructing hiding places and the innumerable quantity of dark holes which he had schemed for hiding priests all through England.”
For six days, the Tower of London’s torturers stretched Nicholas on the rack, but he would not reveal the names of the families in whose houses he had built priest holes. On the final day, the torturers were especially brutal: they racked Nicholas so severely that his hernia ruptured and he died.
But papal approbation and heavenly patrons notwithstanding, Catholics who may be willing to tolerate the goofiness of clowns and the wizardry of magicians just can’t get past the slinky, suggestive costumes of acrobats. And they have a point.
Ellen Donovan, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, has spent years studying the evolution of circuses and circus acts. “Historically, circus performers showed a lot of skin,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons that made the performances questionable for children. Bare upper chest for men, and maybe even a little cleavage showing for women, as well as short (well above the knee) skirts, have been the standard costume for over 100 years in the American circus.
“Even when performers were completely covered by leotards or tights, their costumes were often pink or flesh-coloured to simulate nudity. And, compared with the costumes in a Cirque du Soleil performance, the costumes of the Vatican performance are quite modest. Classical ballerinas often wear not much more than circus performers. Maybe this is a high art versus low art bias.”
Some critics may find it hard to believe, but there is a practical aspect to minimalist circus costumes. “Bodies and what they can do are one of the central aspects of performance,” says Donovan. “So, covering up bodies in layers of costume that hide what the body is actually doing undercuts the purpose of the performance. An additional aspect is safety – flowing drapery when performing acrobatically, or on the trapeze, or the high wire, or with animals would cause accidents.”
Puritans will always be with us, but their disapproval didn’t trouble Don Bosco, and it certainly doesn’t trouble the popes.
Thomas J Craughwell is the author of This Saint Will Change Your Life
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.