Well, not quite. Mattia Villardita, was dressed as the superhero—his childhood idol. It helps that he channels many of Spider-Man's most noteworthy qualities by bringing joy to children in need.

Mr. Villardita was invited to sit in the V.I.P. section of the San Damaso courtyard, where the general audience with Pope Francis has been taking place during the pandemic. And he was easy to spot as he sat at the end of one of the rows dressed in a full Spider-Man costume next to a priest wearing all black.

The real-life superhero was invited to the audience because of his everyday commitment to bring joy to suffering children. Read more

What is it about these stories—and the Spider-Man tale in particular—that fascinate us? May I suggest that it has something to do with Christianity, more precisely, with the strange hybrid figure around which all of the Christian religion revolves. St. Athanasius's most significant contribution to the Christological debates of the early centuries of the Church's life was a soteriological argument for the dual nature of Jesus. In the saint's pithy formula: only a human being could save us; and only God could save us. If Jesus were only divine—as the Monophysites argued—then his saving power wouldn't be truly applied to us. If he were only human—as the Arians and Nestorians argued—then he could not really lift us out of the morass of sin and guilt in which we find ourselves mired. In a word, salvation was possible only through a God-man, someone in the world but not of it, someone like us in all things but sin, and at the same time utterly unlike us. Read more

Sources

• Rev Robert Barron, Word on Fire
• Image: Collider

Father Robert Barron is the rector of Mundelein Seminary near Chicago and the founder of Word On Fire.