Pope Francis has a new ferula according to Rorate, it was donated to the Pope last month by Goldlake, a mining corporation that is part of major Italian cement holding Gruppo Financo, with mining concessions in Argentina and Honduras (from which came the metals used for this staff).Personally, I preferred the one he used at Lampedusa, there is something about using the image of Christ as an ornament which is not quite Catholic. I know I'm just an ol' liberal who thinks at Mass there should be just one image of Christ rather than a multiplicity, and then there is the question of the theology pf the image of the risen Christ super-imposed on the Cross, to say nothing of morality of Gruppo Financo and Goldlake. With Francis too there is the question of 'bling'.
