The arrangements for the funeral of Pope Francis were meticulous, and the ceremony drew a global audience. But it is the arrangement of the letters on his tombstone that are now attracting outsize attention.The simple slab has only 10 letters, but the spacing between them can make it read like “F R A NCISC VS.”
The lettering is meant to be read as Franciscus, the derivative of the pope’s name in Latin. (V stood for both u and v in Latin.) Pope Francis’ marble tomb fulfills his desire for an unadorned final resting place. In that sense, the tombstone lettering in Times Roman, a workmanlike font widely used in the English, could be considered appropriate. But for those who obsess about kerning, the space between letters, the view from above the tomb is not exactly an aesthetically pleasing one.
“Woe be unto the person who decided to do it the way that they did it, just because it’s a bad decision that will last for a long time, unless they change it,” said Charles Nix of Monotype, one of world’s largest typeface and technology companies. The double take for some when they look at the letters is caused by the lack of kerning between pairs of letters. So what happened at the Vatican? “It may have been laid out as individual letters, and not actually typed,” Nix said, adding for centuries, people have tried to figure out a mathematical way to engrave letters, and it always fails.
A representative of Vatican could not immediately be reached for comment about the lettering. A lack of kerning is common on grave markers, Nix said, especially those from the 20th century onward because they are produced very mathematically. An editor at Fast Company magazine was among the first to notice the discordance. Other more casual observers pointed to the “A” in Franciscus standing apart from other letters.“Why does it look like pressing on the letter ‘A’ will open a secret chamber where the ark of the covenant is stored?” asked Elle Cordova, a digital creator. “Pope’s name was just cranked out by someone operating a stonecutting machine, probably via sandblasting from a template prepared on a computer,” said Paul Shaw, a type and design historian.
Evan Sult, an art director and designer, wrote: “We all recognise there are far more fundamentally significant aspects of lived life than how text is presented, the life and legacy of the Pope being perhaps one of the ultimate examples. Which makes it all the more incredible when the moment arrives where the typography plays its key role in the symphony of shared experience … and utterly blows the note.”
