28 seconds wiped away 715 years, during which the church of Rome had ignored the saint hermit resting in his crystal coffin, in his ceremonial garments, in Collemaggio.
Benedict XVI has prayed, the first Pope ever, at San Pietro Celestino's sepulchre, in front of the first Holy Door in Christianity, where the first "free" pardon of sins was granted to anyone who repented - not to those who could pay. Anyone who visited, sincerely repentant, the church of Collemaggio. And who could ever control the sincerity of their souls if not God? A truly disruptive message for the traditional Church hierarchy, almost 3 centuries before Martin Luther. It is understandable that the Church of Rome deliberately ignored and tried to delete the memory of the Pope that never ruled in Rome but in Aquila, the Pope that was captured by the soldiers of his follower, and imprisoned in the remote castle of Ferentino where he died.
For centuries scholars were led to believe that this Pope was to be identified in the mysterious creature of Dante's Inferno "Colui che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto - Who made by his cowardice the grand refusal" (Inferno, III, 59), while Aquilans continued to interpret that this figure was most probably Pontius Pilate.
Above the Holy Door of Collemaggio stands a stone eagle, the symbol of the city and of the swabian Empire - the Frederick II who was known as stupor mundi - and in the lunette an image of St. John the Baptist, so dear to Celestine V and on whose death day, 29 August, the Perdonanza used to be celebrated since 1294.
And today this Pope born in Germany honored our dear hermit, for the first time after centuries of voluntary neglect from the church, and as if to give him a salute, left his coronation symbols on the crystal coffin of his remote - but so near today - precedessor.
