Cabasaria — unknown papal itineraries
The article introduces the reader to the hitherto unknown world of the cabasaria, modelled by the Vatican Radio-edited bulletins that served as John Paul II’s itineraries. I try to demonstrate that they draw on the tradition — going back to the 4th century — of pilgrims’ accounts, the itineraria, and like them contain information about the route of a pilgrimage, the schedule of its successive stages, the patrons of the shrines visited during the pilgrimage, and about the geographical and cultural peculiarities of the visited countries. The detailed cabasaria refigure in Ricoeurean sense John Paul II’s pontificate, creating its characteristic, pilgrimage-based categories of time, within which there emerge rich, varied and multilayered temporal structures. The cabasaria also turn out to be constructs marked by intensified dialogue: in addition to direct addressees journalists of the Vatican media, they invoke a supra-addressee — external recipients secular media journalists, whose role strengthens with successive pilgrimages.