Young Pope — Episode 3 Review
The International Ombudsman Association defines the field of the organizational ombudsman explicitly in its code of ethics and standards of practice. I helped contribute to these by providing the Amharic interpretation they use. I know them well. As an organizational ombudsman at the University of North Dakota and the University of California, Merced I learned that there is a friction betwixt and between how these principles are understood in theory and how they are understood in practice. Chief amongst them in theory is independence.
Independence can be spelled out with many examples. Let me pick just one, to flesh out the principle. Independence, of the ombuds office, means an institution may determine how much money is apportioned to the budget, but may not decide what to do with those funds. They can say we have $100k to spare, or we only have $1k to spare. What they cannot do is play with and manipulate the budget according to their whims and caprices in retaliation of the organizational ombudsman acting as the watchdog (theory) rather than the lapdog (practice) of the administration they would prefer.
Get ሄኖክ’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
In the Young Pope, we come across the idea of sovereignty. This is why the computer programmer, writer, investor, founder, and independent scholar Curtis Yarvin recommended this content for my consumption. I have thus far watched episodes 1–4, and want to use this space to talk about Episode 3 in particular.
In Episode 3, His Holiness Pope Pious XIII (played by Jude Law) is able to fluster the seemingly ever-calm His Eminence Cardinal Voiello. Voiello is described by a reclusive priest as a politician. What that priest meant is that Voiello is not in the Vatican for purposes of piety, but for court intrigue and the pursuit of power through lofty euphemisms such as: deliberation, consultation, the press etc. Pious XIII, on the other hand, whom Voiello and other corrupt cardinals thought would be a young moderate pawn for their game theories, tells Voiello that he put compromise and collegiality at the forefront during his period as a cardinal, but as pope he had no interest in such things. Instead, the pope would, as is becoming of his office, express total sovereignty and decisiveness, consequences be damned.
Think critically about these matters as you watch or rewatch HBO’s Young Pope. Apply this type of critical lens to all art you consume. Watch your brain grow.
