why is the crucifix “hidden”?
My musical response: "I'm making a list, checking it twice..."
Actually, I'm not making a list: I'm not naming names, and deliberately. I don't want this to turn into a brawl.
As for the pics: I've seem about a bazillion pictures of Pope Francis (as have we all, they're everywhere) and this is the one time I've seen him without a visible pectoral cross. Or I should say "the only two" times. Are you saying Francis is intentionally concealing the Cross of Christ? As if he could fool Muslims and Jews into thinking he is not the Pope? My first assumption, based on reasonable statistical likelihood (a bazillion to two) is that the pictures were photoshopped.
Hiding a cross because of wanting to distance oneself from Christ, at any rate, would be a spiritual and moral fault, especially for a cleric who bears the crucifix upon his own person. But it's not snarking, which is a verbal thing --- its etymology is snort + remark --- a good example of Lewis Carroll's onomatopoiea---and I'm not quite sure why the alleged incidents with the cross would be brought into a discussion about snarking.