#clary scribbles

The story about Cardinal Tagle giving Cardinal Prevost (now Pope Leo XIV!) candy is running around the Philippines, but I'm not sure the wider world knows! And, since it's a cute story, I've decided to share it with you guys :) OG Video of Cardinal Tagle telling the story:

My translation (I bolded the part with Pope Leo XIV, but I think the whole story is worth listening to!)

I go back to 2013, where we experienced that first afternoon...our first experience of the conclave. We only vote once in that first day, considering that all the traditions and oath-taking and things are already very long.

When I saw how long all that took...and we weren't that many cardinals back then, okay, we were about 119. Now, we're....133! Even then, I thought the process was so very long. And tomorrow? Two votes in the morning, two votes in the afternoon. Who knows how long it will all take.

So, I brought candy.

If your stomach starts to grumble, at least you have some candy, right?

After I gave my ballot and sit down, I unwrapped and ate a piece of candy. The cardinal next to me nudged me. In Italian, he said, "What did you bring in the Sistine Chapel?!"

I said, "Candy! Caramel."

"This little boy!" he exclaimed. "Bringing candies in the Sistine Chapel!"

I said, "But the conclave process is so long...sometimes I get hungry."

He said, "Do you still have a piece? Give me one, too!"

"You wanted one and still you were pretending to be mad?" I gave him a piece! He's from Columbia, you know.

That's why, whenever we see each other, he remembers what happened and goes, "Ah! This small boy with his candy."

Now, when Pope Francis was elected, the Cardinal Deacon who's supposed to announce him at the time was Cardinal Tauran. He has Parkinson's, and his speech is a little affected by that. When we were leaving, he was shaking a little, and he told me, he grabbed my arm and said, "I was scared that people wouldn't be able to hear me, maybe my voice wouldn't be clear, you know..."

I said, "It's okay, be calm, be calm." I pulled candy out of my pocket and pushed it to him. "Eat some candy! So you can relax."

This time around, I also was always bringing candy [to the conclave]. Next to me was Cardinal Prevost. When he started taking deep breaths, I leaned toward him and asked, "Would you like some candy?"

He said, "Yes, please, give me one!"

So there! That's my first act of charity to the new Sancto Papa. So there were many moments like that.

Yesterday, when he'd already chosen his name and everything...we all have our own prayer pamphlets[?]. We each had one. [Pope Leo] asked me a question before he reached the two-thirds majority. I answered his question by writing on my pamphlet and passing it to him. He read it, and then he ripped off the page of the pamphlet that I'd written on.

Well, then, my prayer book, prayer guide...it was lacking a page! What he did, he gave me his prayer pamphlet and said, "Look, we'll switch!"

After he became the pope, I said, "Oh, you owe me something. Sign the prayer pamphlet! Sign it!"

He said, "Here, this is my first signature as Pope. Leone."

I tucked it away. It's still with me! [...]

So, all that happened, and you have to still show, especially to him...this humanity. Because you know how....I mean, us, we all hold just one diocese, and even then it's a heavy responsibility. One dicastery, thats also very heavy. But imagine, being responsible for everything! So, those little acts of kindness, of humanity, I think can sustain a person, covered by God.

Here's the thing. Falling in love with a good person is not the same as being a good person, and I love how Jane Austen recognizes that--I love how that message is highlighted and underlined within the text. But it could be the catalyst for redemption.

Something I've pondering is that, in spite of the ending of Mansfield Park, maybe it still could be. We leave Henry Crawford like this:

All that followed was the result of her imprudence; and he went off with her at last, because he could not help it, regretting Fanny even at the moment, but regretting her infinitely more when all the bustle of the intrigue was over, and a very few months had taught him, by the force of contrast, to place a yet higher value on the sweetness of her temper, the purity of her mind, and the excellence of her principles.

That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just measure attend his share of the offence is, we know, not one of the barriers which society gives to virtue. In this world the penalty is less equal than could be wished; but without presuming to look forward to a juster appointment hereafter, we may fairly consider a man of sense, like Henry Crawford, to be providing for himself no small portion of vexation and regret: vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and regret to wretchedness, in having so requited hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable, and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had rationally as well as passionately loved.

The way Emma M. Lion deals with friends is so delightful and makes me so happy. My thoughts are running around, so let me try to concretize it:

I appreciate that she has friends from her past. Her existence doesn't start at the beginning of the novel, and while portraying the growth of a relationship from conception is a valid writer choice to do to get readers very invested, I appreciate that Emma has vibrant friendships that spring from the rich life she's already lived before our own acquaintance with her begins.

She's friends with family. She's affectionate towards her older cousin, Arabella, and while there doesn't seem to be Affection with her aunt, it's pretty clear that her aunt is looking out for her. (I appreciate this because I feel like there is a strict divide between friends and family in many of the stories I read, and this one highlights that you can have fun relationships with your kin.)

The friends from her past aren't introduced all at once. Definitely keeps things from being overwhelming. But more than that--we can see how, even in their absence, her friends affect Emma. She loves and thinks fondly of them. So, by the time they're officially introduced, you love and are fond of them too.

Her past relationships grow and change. For example, Emma enters an event and encounters her childhood nemesis, who she remembers hating and who hated her. But he's grown up, and after a little bit of reluctance, Emma accepts the fact and rejoices in it.

It's very refreshing that the chemistry that Emma has with multiple male friends doesn't mean her swooning over them or the narrative pushing a romantic arc. I mean, I love romantic arcs, and I believe that we'll probably get one for Emma in the future. But it's impressive to me that whichever potential love interest actually comes forward (and it's impressive to me that I can't say with certainty which one will--as of the beginning of the third book, there's no one male character that is marked out as Emma's One True Love), nothing supercedes that they're all interesting characters that have genuine and interesting relationships with Emma, and bring out different sides of her. In other words, I love that the writer doesn't skimp on the friends part of friends to lovers.

Emma doesn't have 'a group of friends'. She has friends from different contexts in her life. Can I just say how marvelous and lovely this is? I don't know, I think modern stories romanticize One True Group of Friends almost as much as One True Love. Emma doesn't have a specific pack of people that all have relationships to one another. She's friends with her maid, her cousins, childhood people she interacted with, someone she's met in a ball, her tenant, her vicar, her schoolmates, and the people she's encountered in St Crispian's. Sometimes these people intersect. Sometimes they don't. Emma doesn't feel the need to get them together in one place and she sometimes outright states she doesn't want them to, considering how markedly different those characters are. But the fact that Emma can be friends with this fun diversity of people is very cool.

I feel like they would have made a pretty interesting pair. There are 3 reasons they didn't end up together if I remember correctly, which were: 1) Dan had killed a man (in self-defense + defense of another person I think?) and he is still laden with guilt + Jo herself thinks of him as 'sin-stained' 2) Jo thinks Amy would not approve of the match and low-key warns her to distance her daughter for a while 3) Jo thinks that Bess is too cool and maidenly(?) something along those lines to return the affection.

#2' definitely true, and I can see why Jo warns Amy away (it's completely reasonable even if there's part of me that dislikes her for it--if her parents were okay with letting her marry a poor professor twice her age and with dependents, why can't she and Amy entertain Bess being with one of Jo's best students?). But #3 really is an outright assumption, and we don't have enough of Bess to confirm what she would have felt either way, I think. There really might have been a chance--they both appreciate beauty and admire the goodness in each other in different ways.

And #1 is just an interesting conflict. Dan is sorry. I think he even confesses to a priest. It reflects on him that the death weighs so heavily. But I don't like that Alcott keeps him like that, potentially forever (I suppose this is a separate though related thought from his relationship from Bess). He doesn't find peace and that makes me so sad. And again, I was very much bothered by Jo calling him in her head sin-stained when he is clearly trying to atone. It felt strange of her character.

Dan/Bess would've been interesting, both character-wise (I think Dan would have appreciated Bess' gentle nature and enlivened it, and Bess could've made Dan softer and directed his protective instincts) and thematically (of course you can be forgiven--true goodness can see your sin, embrace you in the midst of it, and accompany you to your salvation).