LAST week, the billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez were married in Venice. Their three-day nuptials cost $55 million.

This is not the first time Venice has been subjected to such hyper events. In 1955, an Italian Princess Ira von Fürstenberg (then an underage 15-year-old) married 31-yearold Prince Alfonso of HohenloheLangenburg in a lavish ceremony that made the headlines.

Venice, although 1,600 years old, still exudes romance. Born of commercial wealth, it attracts money. It has become inured to costly eccentricities. It has been flattered by generations of admirers. Their list is endless, their devotion lasting.

John Ruskin an early and influential aficionado published a three-volume homage Stones of Venice, between 1851-53.

In 1880, the unconventional writer George Eliot described Venice as a `creature born with an imperial attitude`. She and her husband John Cross spent their honeymoon in Venice. Cross, rather unchivalrously, attempted suicide by jumping into the Grand Canal. He survived, to complete his sentence.

In 1960, James Morris wrote a lyrical appreciation of Venice. He described it as `a half melancholy city, but not melancholy because of present anxieties, only because of old regrets`. He loved its `mixture of the sad, the flamboyant and the nostalgic`.

Between then and 1980, James Morris changed gender. As Jan Morris, she published The Venetian Empire (1980), in which she traced the history of the Venetians as `maritime imperialists`. Her regrets were that modern Venice was `no longer a romantic vision`. It had become an `international catastrophe`, taken over by the world as `a universal heritage`.

It is now open to the highest bidder, and who could outbid the billionaire Bezos? He revivified Venice`s economy further by donating 3m to the city`s cultural monuments.

Those with a conscience might cavil why so much was spent on the Bezos extravaganza, when thousands of starving Palestinians are being massacred daily in Gaza. To date, their toll is 56,772. Over 80pc of them were civilians. They died in obedience to no laws. They were killed so that Israeli settlers could build homes on their graves.

Incidentally, Netanyahu has expressed rare remorse. He mourned the personal sacrifice he has had to make by postponing the wedding of his son Anver, `for security reasons`. Anver`s must be the bloodiest stag party in history.

When will the senseless wars across theglobe cease? They ignite the world but fail to sear its conscience.

Meanwhile, the White House is gradually replacing the Vatican. From the secular Oval Office comes the new Urbi et Orbi blessing, of Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) preferably one brokered by President Donald Trump.

In 1963, the great humanist Pope John XXIII published his encyclical Pacem in Terris. In it, he emphasised `that every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life`. That encyclical was recognised as more than `just the voice of an old priest, nor just that of an ancient Church`. It spoke as `the voice of the conscience of the world`.

Pope John died soon after his encyclical was issued. Many remember his numerous acts of compassion, particularly his visit in 1958 to the Regina Coeli Prison in Rome, where he celebrated Christmas with the inmates. He surprised them by recalling that his own cousin had been imprisoned in the same jail for poaching.Ten years later, in a similar act of compassion, his successor Pope John Paul II visited the Muslim gunman Mehmet Ali A ca who had shot him two years earlier.

The actions of thesetwo humane pontiffs are examples to be remembered by persons of every faith.

When we humans look up into God`s firmament, we should not expect to see incendiary drones, fiery missiles or B-2s overloaded with bombs. There is an infinity beyond. Our Earth is just a speck in the cosmos. Astronomers tell us that `Earth is just one out of 3.2 trillion planets in our galaxy ... and the Milky Way is just one out of 2tr galaxies in the observable universe`.

Awareness of such insignificance was put to clever use by president Bill Clinton when he occupied the Oval Office. He wrote in his book Citizen (2024) that a ploy he used to defuse arguments between opponents whether individuals or states was to keep a fragment of the moon rock brought back in Apollo 1969 on the table between them. When a solution seemed unattainable, he would point to the 3.6 billion-year-old moon rock and remind the discussants of their transience.

Should we really need a fragment from the heavens to broker harmony on earth? • The wnter is an author.

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