Pope Leo XIV has announced, though not in the form of a bull, that he will be sharing the Apostolic Palace not just with God, but with flatmates. (Being American, he probably refers to them as ‘roomies’.) While this might seem an odd move for God’s Vicegerent on Earth, even the sacrosanct precincts of the Vatican City are not, it seems, immune from the housing crisis.
Living hugger-mugger places the Holy Father on a par with almost everyone who’s ever lived. Jesus ‘roomed’ with his apostles, after all, and for centuries kings and queens slept among their attendants.
The Pope won’t be advertising for his companions, I imagine, but even so, one does wonder. Will he plump for the best genuflecter, or the one most likely to replace the loo roll? How will his fellows distinguish between their scarlet robes? Maybe nuns are at work on sanctified nametags. I hope, at least, that there is a piano, so they can play Tom Lehrer’s Vatican Rag: ‘Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!’
His Holiness had better be careful in his choices, as flatshares can lead to intrigue. Christopher Marlowe lodged with Thomas Kyd, a fellow playwright. When Marlowe was accused of nefarious activities and dangerous doubts about Christ’s divinity, Kyd was imprisoned and tortured. He grassed on his ex-flatmate, accusing him of holding the blasphemous beliefs that St Paul was a trickster and Christ had romantic feelings for John the Evangelist, but by this point Marlowe had already been murdered.
Even in recent years, flatshares emanated a whiff of immorality. Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler shared digs, as did Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess. The occultist Aleister Crowley’s flatmates endured a real skeleton in a cupboard, which he ‘fed’ with blood. I need hardly mention the sitcom Friends.
In my late twenties, I shared my flat in a converted Victorian school in east London with (like Rabbit in Winnie-the-Pooh) a roster of friends and relations. Two of the bedrooms were situated on a mezzanine, requiring a healthy lack of interest in privacy. One flatmate, a barrister, used to practise his bagpipes in situ, until another resident told him to cut it out or she’d get the Bangla boys on to him. After that, the streets of Whitechapel were remarkably free from skirling.
Since the Pope is the most influential person on Earth, I wonder who will follow in his scarlet-shoe-clad footsteps. Will the new Archbishop of Canterbury open up the bedrooms of Lambeth Palace to curates, vergers and sub-deacons? Will Buckingham Palace resound to the shrieks of minor royals arguing about watching The Crown? I certainly hope so. In these days of increased isolation, flatshares are a Good Thing, for the mighty as well as the meek.
Flatmates expose us to aspects of other people that we wouldn’t necessarily want to be exposed to, whether that’s the appalling way your fellow cuts his nails, or a wildly differing political viewpoint. This makes us more humble and more empathetic. Or at least it should. It can, however, also turn you into a confirmed and blinkered misanthrope. Let’s hope that the Pope is as forgiving as he’s supposed to be. In the Vatican flatshare, to stay sane, he’ll truly have to live up to the meaning of Pontifex and build some bridges.
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