The Botched Kerning on Pope Francis’s Tomb

Mark Wilson, writing for Fast Company:

Pope Francis’s tomb is simple by design. Francis — a modest man who opted to live in humble quarters alongside his peers rather than in the Vatican’s official housing for the leader of the church — requested nothing more than his name and a cross to adorn regional marble (“the stone of Liguria, the land of his grandparents”). Vatican News goes as far as to position this stone, not the most premium, as “the people’s stone.”

It really is quietly beautiful. But atop that marble is a tomb inscribed with the name “Franciscus.” Or what — due to terrible spacing between letters, known as kerning — reads something more like “F R A NCIS VS.”

Fast Company’s headline reads “The Kerning on the Pope’s Tomb Is a Travesty”, but travesty is not the right word. The right word is sin.

★ Wednesday, 30 April 2025