Pope Francis revolutionized the church with his simple style, close to the last and far from the splendor of the Vatican. From the dream of a poor church to solitude during the pandemic, its pontificate is made of powerful images, radical choices and contradictions. A pope who marked our time, in the heart of the world and to the margins of faith.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell has announced with pain the death of Pope Francis, with these words: «Dear brothers and sisters, with profound pain I have to announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 on April 21, on the Monday of the Angel Monday, the Bishop of Rome, Francesco, he returned to his father’s house. His whole life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and his Church. He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with loyalty, courage and universal love, in particular in favor of the poorest and most marginalized. With immense gratitude for his example of true disciple of the Lord Jesus, we recommend the soul of Pope Francis to the infinite merciful love of God one and trine “.
A life for others and for the weakest
“I dream of a poor church for the poor.” The will of Pope Francis is made up of seven words, In line with the name he had chosen by climbing to the papal throne on March 13, 2013. From the beginning the first Jesuit pontiff of the story marks a difference with the predecessors and says for symbols: they are like you, the last of the men, and I imposed on the name of the most humble saint. In the Europe of relativism, which now no longer believes in anything, hopes that it works. The Pauperista posture in an anti -capitalist key is a legacy of the South American tradition and is the most visible figure of his pontificate, which begins with a symbolic image: while he climbs the ladder of the plane that brings him to Brazil by lavishing an old bag with the documents, as if to demonstrate that Valletti and secretaries are not needed because faith is essence and the boss is a servant.
Black leather on white guise, even at the end of the world the shape is substance. It will be a stretch of his communication: peasant shoes instead of red slippers (which also symbolize the blood of the martyrs), Casa Santa Marta instead of the papal apartment, the metal and wood crucifix instead of gold. It is a way of being. It is the feeling-dealer of the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church. Since the images flow and only a few are fixed in the memory, the highest moment of the path of a fascinating and controversial Pope who guided the Church in the season of the image and the great frost of the vocations, is another.
Only in front of the pandemic
This is also accompanied by a historical phrase: “God do not leave us at the mercy of the storm”. Francesco in the San Pietro Deserto Square and swept by the rain at dusk: it is the immortal photograph of a papacy. On March 27, 2020, while asking the Lord to save humanity from the scourge of the pandemic, Jorge Bergoglio enters the heart of Christianity, stretches out his hand to accompany a lost people and concludes his journey from the suburbs to the center: the man “who came from the end of the world” finally reaches the soul of the faithful and caresses it in tune with the Gospel.
The son of the railway worker
Jorge Mario was born in Buenos Aires (Barrio Flores) on December 17, 1936 from Piedmontese emigrants, dad Mario employee of the railways and mother queen housewife, committed to feeding the five children. He starts working at 14: cleaning officer, then accounting in a stockings. In the morning he accounts, in the afternoon he attends an industrial institute. He graduated chemical expert and enters a laboratory that analyzes food products. At 21 he meets the disease and Christ together. It happens while he is in the hospital between life and death for a serious pneumonia (he is removed part of the right lung). «Relatives tried to console me with circumstance sentences. One day Sister Dolores comes to visit me, who had prepared me for First Communion. He tells me: “You are following the example of Jesus”. Then I understand how the pain must be faced Christianly and I find peace ».
Jorge Bergoglio enters the seminary, in the many biographies released he says he had a girlfriend. Then the novitiate in Cordoba in the company of Jesus, a degree in philosophy at 27 years old. He teaches from priest and climbs the steps of the Curial Hierarchy. In 1992 John Paul II appoints him auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, six years later he became primate of Argentina, then cardinal always thanks to Pope Wojtyla. In the darkest season in homeland history helps the opponents of the general regime but some sketches of mud arrives on the tunic: the anti -clerical left accuses him of having had a part in the kidnapping of two priests, until one of them scagiona. Veleni contained in the book of a former militant of the Rossi Montoneros Rossi, looking for advertising.
The bishop who cooked the meals
As a bishop, meals was cooked alone, fascinated by frugality and reluctance. As Pope he made the Romans fall in love when he presented himself, without escort or notice, from an optical to change his glasses. It will be the pontiff of everyday life, of the “people ‘meeting”, vaguely closer to John XXIII than to Paul VI. AnniLuce distant from the theological peaks of Benedict XVI. His story is his figure, and says more of the message dominated by the cacophony. Sobriety in places and rituals becomes redundancy in words: a fate in the society of media narration. So the Holy Father is forced to live with contradictions. It is against socialist extremism but caresses progressive instances and ends up pleasure in non -believers. It opposes abortion and euthanasia but is exploited by the fanatics of universal desires exchanged for rights.
The metaphor of the cramp
Since the first steps in the tunic it has been prudent, concrete, close to the last and does not nourish any sympathy for the theology of liberation that marks the South American Church, indeed on several occasions the Guevarist derives condemns. His favorite metaphor is that of the cramp. «In Buenos Aires between the breeding father and the rebellious son there were heavy ideological differences. An old priest listened to the reasons of the two, then he said: “The problem is that you forgot the cramp. The cramp at your father and my grandfather when they got up at four in the morning to milk the cows” ». The centrality of the family, the dignity of work, social justice are the still points of a high prelate who in 2013 becomes Pope in the most extraordinary situation in the history of the Church: the renunciation of Joseph Ratzinger and coexistence with an emeritus pontiff a few meters from him.
He was the guardian of the family
It is granitic custodian of the traditional family. When the Argentine president Cristina Kirchner proposes a law that equates straight marriages and unions Tuona: «The identity and survival of the family, father, mother and children is at stake. The life of many children who will be discriminated in advance is at stake, depriving them of the human maturation that God wanted to give himself with a father and a mother ». Since for a Jesuit ecumenism is everything, the phrase “who I am to judge” -actually addressed to the Vatican lobby -has become a transgender passepartout to justify any fluidity on gays.
The flock of the faithful speaks little of the doctrine, much of the salvation of the planet. It is against populisms but does it as a Latin American populist. One day he lets the possibility of resignation ledger, the next one announces: “Never had in mind, for the moment”. In Motu his own “like a loving mother” he fights the battle against the pedophilia of priests, sculpting rules that the Curia sometimes applies, many other disorders. In the encyclical “Laudato yes'” water, earth, nature seem to be transformed into divinity. Some conservative cardinals accuses Francesco of wanting to derubare the Bimillenary Church to a new age sect in the postcristian West dominated by ecological scientism. With him the fibrillations travel the Vatican. And when in front of the bishops he recommends closing the doors to the gay seminarians (“there is already too much frociage in the Vatican”) the dome of St. Peter metaphorically trembles.
The Instagram pontiff
Francesco is the Pope of the communication on a carpet. On the social planet is the first to open an Instagram account that reaches a million followers in 12 hours. It is the first to sign an article on the Opinions of the New York Times (on global solidarity). “We must meet people.” So it is also the first to give multiple interviews of a rock star. When he decides to do it in Italy, he entrusts his thoughts – among others – to Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the very secular newspaper La Repubblica, and to the shrewd friacchione catodic Fabio Fazio. Francesco is a manna for progressives, agnostics and atheists who burn him in an attempt to cooperate it. Luca Casarini, prejudiced pursuant to Leonka, owner of the “Osteria alla Sbirro dead”, who becomes the Vatican Commodore in landing migrants and performs in embarrassing catwalks at the episcopal conferences, also arrives in the army of the angels.
Contrary to every war as per the evangelical dictation, it stops that of Barack Obama in Syria but nothing can to avoid that of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. In foreign policy Jorge Bergoglio marks a strong discontinuity: it is the least American pontiff of the last two centuries. The relationship with the US clergy is conflicting, the one with the only courteous White House. On the contrary, it opens to China and signs an agreement with XI Jinping that frustrates Chinese bishops for years victims of fierce persecutions: their appointment must have the consent of the regime.
In the grace of eternity
Slowly health abandons him. Afflicted by joint pain in the legs, it occurs more and more often in the wheelchair, it is operated on the colon, it is hospitalized several times for respiratory crises. That part of the missing lung becomes a concrete absence. Medical bulletins become increasingly frequent, increasingly more comforting public apparitions. The messages are also less powerful. Loting against “self -destructive society” which has the only religion the defrosting of the permafrost, becomes difficult. Francesco does not like to talk about his health. To those who ask him how he is, until the last day he replies: «I am still alive. Don’t forget to pray for me ». It is now in the grace of eternity.
