“God don’t 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: that day 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.
It is the highest moment of the path of a multifaceted and controversial pope who guided the church in the season of the image and the great frost of the vocations. He would have preferred another. When, going up to the scale of the plane that brings him to Brazil (2013), he bears an old bag with documents with him, as if to demonstrate that Valletti and secretaries are not needed because faith is essence and the head 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. From the beginning, the first Jesuit pope of history marks a difference with the predecessors and says for symbols: they are like you, the last of men, and I imposed on the name of the most humble saint because “I dream of a poor church for the poor”. In the Europe of relativism, which no longer believes in anything, he hopes (in vain) that works. The pauperist posture in an anti -capitalist key is a legacy of the South American tradition. It is the feeling-dealer of the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, born in Buenos Aires (Barrio Flores) on December 17, 1936 from Piedmontese emigrants, dad Mario employees of the railways and mother queen housewife, committed to feeding the five children.
Jorge Mario begins to work at 14: cleaning officer, then accountant in a stocking factory. 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 ».
He enters the seminary, in the many biographies released he also 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 Wojtyla. In the darkest season in homeland history helps the opponents of the general regime but some sketches of mud comes to him on the tunic: the anti -clerical left that he naively caresses him accuses him of having had a part in the kidnapping of two priests, until one of them exonerates him. Poisons contained in the book of a former militant of the Rossi Montoneros Rossi in search of advertising. Bergoglio is concrete, close to the last, politically elusive, but does not nourish any sympathy for the theology of liberation that marks the South American Church, indeed on several occasions condemns the Guevariste derives. 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 the coexistence a few meters with an emeritus pontiff light years later as a master of doctrine and theology. As a bishop, meals was cooked alone. 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 and the theater shots, of the “people ‘meeting”, vaguely closer to John XXIII than to Paul VI. His story is his figure, and says more of the message he leaves us, 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. It is however granite 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, pronounces the phrase “who I am to judge” -actually addressed to the Vatican lobby -become passe -partout transgender 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 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 just like a loving mother fights the battle against the pedophilia of the priests, sculpting rules that the Curia sometimes applies, many other disasters. In the encyclical Laudato yes water, earth, nature seem to be transformed into divinity. Some conservative cardinal accuses him of wanting to derogate the two -year -old Church to a new age sect in the postcristian West dominated by ecological scientism. Fibrillations travel the Vatican. When in front of the bishops he recommends closing the doors to the gay seminarians (“there is already too much Frociagegus in the Vatican”) the dome of San Pietro – metaphorically – trembles.
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. The first to sign an article on the New York Times opinions page (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. There is also the video message at the Sanremo Festival. Francesco is a manna for progressives, agnostics and atheists who burn him in an attempt to cooperate it. Luca Casarini, prejudiced ex 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 in Ukraine. In foreign policy 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. He opens up to China and signs an agreement with Xi Jinping who frustrates local bishops, for years victims of persecutions: their appointment must have the consent of the regime.
Slowly, health abandons him and fight against “self -destructive society” which has as its only religion the defrosting of the permafrost becomes difficult. Afflicted by joint pain in the legs, he uses the wheelchair. It is operated on the colon. It is hospitalized for increasingly frequent respiratory crises; At 88, that less lung clove becomes its cross. In recent weeks, medical bulletins are worrying, rare and intense public appearances. Exhibition on the swollen face the effects of cortisone but does not give up “to meet people”. On Easter the last private hearing, granted to the very American Catholic vice president JD Vance, and the last appearance for the Urbi et orbi blessing. Then the greeting on the Papamobile to the faithful with a particular meaning, that of farewell. Francesco has never loved to talk about his health. To those who ask him how he is, until the end he replies: «I am still alive. Don’t forget to pray for me ». It is now in grace for eternity.
