Michelangelo Buonarroti llegó al mundo el 6 de marzo de 1475 en Caprese, un pequeño pueblo cercano a Florencia que entonces hervía de ideas, tensiones políticas y ambición artística. Sin saberlo, aquel niño se convertiría en una de las figuras más influyentes del Renacimiento y en un creador capaz de redefinir para siempre la escultura, la pintura y la arquitectura.

Cinco siglos después, su nombre sigue asociado a obras que desafían el paso del tiempo y continúan asombrando por su fuerza y perfección. Falleció en Roma el 18 de febrero de 1564, cuando su leyenda ya estaba grabada en la historia del arte.

Su infancia estuvo marcada por la pérdida: Michelangelo tenía apenas seis años cuando murió su madre. Parte de su crianza transcurrió en Settignano, un pueblo de canteras de mármol donde el martillo y el cincel eran sonidos cotidianos. Allí, rodeado de piedra, aprendió a observar cómo la materia bruta se transformaba en forma y símbolo.

Años más tarde afirmaría que había absorbido el amor por el mármol casi como una herencia temprana, forjando desde niño una relación íntima con el material que consagraría su genio.

A los 13 años, ya instalado en Florencia, ingresó como aprendiz en el taller de Domenico Ghirlandaio, uno de los pintores más prestigiosos de la época. La ciudad era el epicentro cultural del Renacimiento y un imán para artistas, pensadores y mecenas poderosos.

En ese entorno vibrante, Michelangelo no solo aprendió las técnicas del dibujo y la pintura, sino que también accedió a círculos intelectuales decisivos que marcarían el rumbo de una carrera destinada a cambiar la historia del arte, según reconstruye History Extra.

A los 15 años, la familia Medici seleccionó a Michelangelo para asistir a su academia. Lorenzo de’ Medici, llamado “el Magnífico”, se convirtió en su principal mecenas. Allí, el joven artista tuvo acceso a valiosas colecciones y conoció a pensadores y humanistas que enriquecieron su aprendizaje.

Según declaraciones de la historiadora Catherine Fletcher, este vínculo con los Medici resultó determinante tanto en su formación artística como en los desafíos políticos de su vida.

Paralelamente a su acercamiento a la filosofía y las humanidades, Michelangelo comenzó a esculpir mármol y produjo sus primeras obras significativas. Tras la muerte de Lorenzo en 1492, el artista se trasladó temporalmente a otras ciudades italianas, entre ellas Venecia y Bolonia, antes de establecerse en Roma en 1496.

Ya instalado en la capital, recibió el encargo de esculpir una estatua de Baco para un cardenal y poco después completó la célebre Pietà antes de cumplir los 25 años. De acuerdo con History Extra, este trabajo consolidó su fama, aunque debió firmarlo personalmente tras escuchar que otros atribuían la obra a diferentes escultores.

Regresó a Florencia a finales de 1499 como un artista reconocido. Se le asignó la tarea de culminar un proyecto largamente postergado: esculpir un monumental David en un bloque de mármol abandonado durante décadas. Michelangelo dedicó años a este encargo, que marcó un hito técnico y artístico por la escala y la precisión que imprimió al material.

El David, completado en 1504, se instaló en la plaza principal de Florencia. Simbolizó la libertad y la resistencia de la ciudad frente a poderes tiránicos.

De acuerdo con Fletcher, la estatua también reflejó una crítica hacia los Medici y sirvió de inspiración para otros movimientos republicanos en Europa. El sentido de libertad que transmitió el David trascendió lo artístico y se volvió una manifestación política.

En la misma época, Leonardo da Vinci integró el comité encargado de definir el lugar para el David, lo que intensificó la rivalidad entre ambos artistas. Si bien compartieron espacios y contrincaron por el reconocimiento, sus carreras se desarrollaron de modo paralelo y su legado se alimentó del intercambio constante de ideas.

Con el éxito de David, Michelangelo recibió encargos de mayor envergadura. Según History Extra, el papa Julio II lo citó en Roma para que diseñara su tumba, proyecto que se extendió durante cuarenta años.

En medio de estos trabajos, le encomendaron pintar el techo de la Capilla Sixtina entre 1508 y 1512. Esta obra monumental, que incluyó escenas del Génesis, se considera uno de los máximos exponentes del arte del Renacimiento. Fletcher señaló que, a pesar de contar con asistentes, Michelangelo controló minuciosamente todas las fases del proyecto.

Posteriormente, entre 1536 y 1541, pintó el Juicio Final también en la Capilla Sixtina. La extraordinaria escala y la potencia expresiva de estos frescos catapultaron su prestigio como artista integral.

Durante sus años finales en Roma, Michelangelo se enfocó sobre todo en la arquitectura. Destacan sus aportes al diseño de la Basílica de San Pedro, uno de los grandes templos de la cristiandad. Aun en su vejez, mantuvo actividad artística: trabajó en la escultura Rondanini Pietà pocos días antes de su muerte.

Michelangelo falleció en Roma, a los 88 años, el 18 de febrero de 1564. Sus restos descansan en la Basílica de Santa Croce, en Florencia, junto a otras figuras ilustres de la historia italiana.

De acuerdo con testimonios de época y análisis contemporáneos, Michelangelo vivió casi toda su vida sin vínculos románticos evidentes. Sin embargo, en sus últimos años, escribió numerosos sonetos dirigidos a Tommaso dei Cavalieri, lo que ha generado debates en torno a su orientación afectiva.

El legado de Michelangelo permanece vivo a través de sus esculturas, su arquitectura y sus pinturas. Se lo reconoce como una referencia artística universal cuyo genio marcó la transición entre la Edad Media y la modernidad. Su obra continúa asombrando al público y consolidando su lugar entre los grandes nombres de la cultura occidental.

La figura de Michelangelo representa no sólo la creatividad del Renacimiento italiano, sino también la capacidad de influencia humana a través del arte. Su huella sigue vigente en la historia, la estética y la identidad de Occidente.

Deep inside a command center that monitors everything from Russian bombers to North Korean missile launches, a handful of service members are preparing for a very different kind of flight pattern — one led by a jolly man in a red suit.

Each December, the North American Aerospace Defense Command — or NORAD — transforms part of its high-tech operations floor into a holiday command post dedicated to tracking Santa Claus. The same radar systems that protect North American airspace will soon be tuned to follow a sleigh moving at high speed from the North Pole.

The Santa mission, now approaching its 70th year, began by accident. In 1955, a Colorado Springs newspaper printed a phone number from a Sears advertisement inviting children to «call Santa.» The number, misprinted by one digit, rang the operations line of what was then the Continental Air Defense Command. When Col. Harry Shoup, the duty officer that night, realized kids were calling to talk to St. Nick, he played along — and a military tradition was born.

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Today, the Santa Tracker is a global phenomenon that draws millions of online visitors and calls from children in more than 200 countries. But behind the festive lights and holiday cheer, NORAD’s real mission continues without pause — scanning the skies and seas 24 hours a day for potential threats to the U.S. and Canada.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command doesn’t need special equipment to find Santa — it uses the same technology that guards the continent every day.

Tracking begins with the North Warning System, a network of radar stations stretching across Alaska and northern Canada. Those sensors detect everything entering the northern approaches to the U.S. and Canada — including, once a year, a fast-moving sleigh departing the Arctic.

From there, NORAD’s Space-Based Infrared System satellites pick up the heat signature — described tongue-in-cheek each year as Rudolph’s nose — and relay that data to the operations center at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs.

The same systems that track ballistic missile launches and foreign aircraft feed the Santa map millions of families follow each Christmas Eve. The website and app, NORADSanta.org, draw millions of visits worldwide, supported by partnerships with private-sector tech companies to handle the data load.

For the troops and civilians who staff NORAD’s operations center, the holiday season looks different from most. The command never shuts down; watch officers, radar technicians, and support staff work through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day just as they do any other time of year.

While much of the focus turns to Santa tracking, the real work continues in the background — scanning radar feeds, monitoring satellite data, and staying ready to respond to any threat that might appear. Most of the roughly 1,500 people assigned to NORAD and U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Space Force Base and nearby Cheyenne Mountain take at least part of a holiday shift, trading hours, so others can spend time with family.

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U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden participate in NORAD Santa tracker phone calls from South Court Auditorium at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 24, 2021. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

Still, the Santa operation brings a change of pace. Hundreds of volunteers — many of them military spouses, retirees, and local community members — come into the command center each year to answer calls and messages from children around the world. The phone lines open on Christmas Eve, and volunteers work in shifts to handle thousands of questions about Santa’s location.

The room looks a little different that night: screens glow with maps of the sleigh’s route, phones ring constantly, and there are cookies and coffee between the workstations. For a few hours, a command built for high-stakes warning and response turns into a small slice of holiday normalcy, even as the mission carries on.

That same command routine was recently dramatized in the new Netflix film «A House of Dynamite.» In the movie, a single unidentified missile triggers a cascade of decisions across the command center, highlighting how fragile the system can appear when seconds count.

Joint US military and civilian officers monitor TV and computer screens at headquarters for Northcom’s Domestic Wing Center May 12, 2004 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

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The Missile Defense Agency, however, pushed back on the film’s portrayal of a failed interceptor test. An internal memo noted a scene claiming a 50% chance of interception, arguing that, in reality, U.S. missile defense systems have «displayed a 100% accuracy rate in testing for more than a decade.»

So, yes, NORAD is tracking holiday cheer — and ensuring the foundation of American readiness stays intact. On the floor where the phones are answered, and the consoles stay lit, the message is simpler: someone always has the watch.

Pope Leo XIV visited Istanbul’s iconic Blue Mosque on Saturday but didn’t stop to pray, as he focused more on bolstering ties with Orthodox patriarchs and promoting courageous steps for Eastern and Western churches to be united.

Leo took his shoes off and, in his white socks, toured the 17th-century mosque, looking up at its soaring tiled domes and the Arabic inscriptions on its columns as an imam pointed them out to him.

The Vatican had said Leo would observe a «brief moment of silent prayer» in the mosque, but he didn’t. An imam of the mosque, Asgin Tunca, said he had invited Leo to pray, since the mosque was «Allah’s house,» but the pope declined.

Later, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said: «The pope experienced his visit to the mosque in silence, in a spirit of contemplation and listening, with deep respect for the place and the faith of those who gather there in prayer.»

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The Vatican then sent out a corrected version of its bulletin about the trip, removing reference to the planned «brief moment of silent prayer,» without further explanation.

Leo, history’s first American pope, was following in the footsteps of his recent predecessors, who all made high-profile visits to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, as it is officially known, in a gesture of respect to Turkey’s Muslim majority.

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But the visits have always raised questions about whether the pope would pray in the Muslim house of worship, or at the very least pause to gather thoughts in a meditative silence.

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When Pope Benedict XVI visited Turkey in 2006, tensions were high because Benedict had offended many in the Muslim world a few months earlier with a speech in Regensburg, Germany that was widely interpreted as linking Islam and violence.

The Vatican added a visit to the Blue Mosque at the last minute in a bid to reach out to Muslims. He observed a moment of silent prayer, head bowed, as the imam prayed next to him, facing east.

Benedict later thanked him «for this moment of prayer» for what was only the second time a pope had visited a mosque, after St. John Paul II visited one briefly in Syria in 2001.

There were no doubts in 2014 when Pope Francis visited the Blue Mosque: He stood for two minutes of silent prayer facing east, his head bowed, eyes closed and hands clasped in front of him. The Grand Mufti of Istanbul, Rahmi Yaran, told the pope afterwards, «May God accept it.»

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With Leo, though, even the Vatican seemed caught off guard by his decision not to pray. The Holy See had to correct the official record of the visit after it originally kept the planned reference to him pausing for prayer.

Speaking to reporters after the visit, the imam Tunca said he had told the pope: «It’s not my house, not your house, (it’s the) house of Allah.» He said he invited Leo to worship «But he said, ‘That’s OK.’»

«He wanted to see the mosque, wanted to feel (the) atmosphere of the mosque, I think. And was very pleased,» he said.

There was also another change to the official program, after the Vatican said the head of Turkey’s Diyanet religious affairs directorate would accompany Leo at the mosque. He didn’t come and a spokesman from the Diyanet said he wasn’t supposed to, since he had welcomed Leo in Ankara.

Pope Leo XIV and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I leave a doxology service at the Patriarchal Church of Saint George in Istanbul, Turkey, on Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

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Hagia Sophia left off itinerary

Past popes have also visited the nearby Hagia Sophia landmark, once one of the most important historic cathedrals in Christianity and a United Nations-designated world heritage site.

But Leo left that visit off his itinerary. In July 2020, Turkey converted Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque, a move that drew widespread international criticism, including from the Vatican.

After the mosque visit, Leo held a private meeting with Turkey’s Christian leaders at the Syriac Orthodox Church of Mor Ephrem. In the afternoon, he prayed with the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew, at the patriarchal church of Saint George.

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There, they prayed the doxology, a hymn of praise and glory to God, and signed a joint declaration vowing to take courageous steps on the path to unity including to find a common date for Easter.

Eastern and Western churches split in the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope. While ties have warmed, they remain divided and other schisms have formed.

«It is our shared desire to continue the process of exploring a possible solution for celebrating together the Feast of Feasts every year,» the joint statement said, referring to Easter.

The Vatican said in his remarks to the patriarchs gathered, Leo pointed to the next Holy Year to be celebrated by Christians, in 2033 on the anniversary of Christ’s crucifixion, and invited them to go to Jerusalem on «a journey that leads to full unity.»

Leo’s final event was a Catholic Mass in Istanbul’s Volkswagen Arena for the country’s Catholic community, who number 33,000 in a country of more than 85 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslim.

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While Leo was focusing on bolstering relations with Orthodox Christians and Muslims, trip organizers were dealing with more mundane issues.

Pope Leo XIV and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I ttend the Doxology at the Patriarchal Church of Saint George in Istanbul, Turkey, on Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

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Leo’s ITA Airways Airbus A320neo charter was among those caught up in the worldwide Airbus software update, ordered by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. The order came after an analysis found the computer code may have contributed to a sudden drop in the altitude of a JetBlue plane last month.

The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said Saturday that ITA was working on the issue. He said the necessary monitor to update the aircraft was on its way to Istanbul from Rome along with the technician who would install it.

Leo is scheduled to fly from Istanbul to Beirut, Lebanon, on Sunday afternoon for the second leg of his inaugural trip as pope.