A few years back I got interested in printing stuff and noticed that common tools (Word, Powerpoint, Illustrator, ...) get horrible results setting serifed fonts in large sizes. I figured out how to kern manually, but boy is it a hassle.

When I look at large numbers of posters printed by various organizations I find that people today hardly ever use serifed fonts to set titles and I think this is why.

The thing is I don't remember this being a problem with desktop publishing in the 1990s or the early 2000s (though then I was setting titles for a political organization with a novelty font that looked like the font used by Die Grünen.) I'm wondering if I was less picky then or if there has really been a regression, such as a patent troll outlawing good kerning.

I thought pretty seriously though about making my own kerning tables for a font I liked because you only need one for a system.

No, it is just that the letters have equal spaces between them. It is not what we are accustomed to, but it is not wrong. It is a piece of art. Art is what it is, it can't be wrong. Get used to it.

This whole thing / articles surrounding it seem like someone desperate to talk about their industry and imposing a "controversy" on other news ...

I'll say otherwise.

Some people would say there is a spiritual dimension in beauty vs ugliness, and certainly something people would get out of a Catholic or an Orthodox church as opposed to, say, a Baptist church, is going to a beautiful building that evokes certain feelings.

Carelessness about one thing (typography) makes you wonder if you're dealing with a culture of carelessness or "careless people", which many of my relatives in New England think the church leadership was when they interrupted my cousin's wedding to ask us to pray for the pedophile priests.

I've yet to see a serious argument about how the lettering relates to spirituality ...

I've heard it suggested this was done on purpose to spite Pope Francis.

Certainly, Francis had been a key figure in the liturgical reforms and the suppression of the Vetus Ordo including his promulgation of Custodes traditionis. It is not necessarily true that this involves the suppression of the Latin language in the sacred liturgy, but it is mostly true, since the Vatican II reforms involve a much greater implementation of vernacular languages.

So one of the sad ironies of his passing, from the announcement of his death, to the inscription on his tomb, has been the usage of Latin for those liturgical proceedings. The Holy Father was never a huge fan of using Latin himself; in fact all the encyclicals and other documents were authored primarily in Spanish or Italian, and only translated to Latin after the fact. Some endured long, long delays before these Latin translations were pushed to the website.

So yes, perhaps there is some spite involved, in using an approximation of the "Times New Roman" font and really awful kerning, for a Latin funereal inscription for a guy who was more or less Public Enemy #1 of the language itself.

I am also curious to know the value or rarity of the stone itself, as it is used in the inscribed part of the slab. If they decide to replace it in the near future, will this incur a great cost or loss of precious stone?

Whatever the cause, perhaps a fitting conclusion to the false humility of a pauperized papacy.