From the balcony of St. Peter's, as soon as he was elected and after the apostolic blessing, I was moved by his simple words: Buon Pranzo (we would translate it in Spanish as "que aproveche"), as it was close to lunchtime.
A realistic Pope, concrete, simple, humble and with character. A Pope who is suffering a lot due to his illness and is offering all his pains. The media rushed to talk about conclave, and we already know that he is stable and has been released from the hospital.
A surprise election
He never thought he would be Pope, and he admits, in his autobiography, that his appointment took him by surprise and without being prepared for it (if anyone could be prepared to be Pope).
He had gone to Rome with a light suitcase for the conclave and had to stay there, because the Holy Spirit (who encourages the Church until the end of time) wanted it that way.
Pope Francis has been characterized by being a "different" Pope, who has been breaking the mold by wanting to present himself not as a powerful man of the earth but as a shepherd of the sheep.
The Church is in perennial transformation, and some external aspects change with time. Jesus manifested himself, but the revelation is discovered throughout history and the symbols that represent the sacred change according to the mentality of the time.
Today, a pope must be seen as a messenger of the gospel, not as a mighty man of the earth.
In 1964, Paul VI sold the tiara and donated the proceeds to charity, with that gesture, the people understood that the Pope should not be paragonized with the powerful of the earth. The papacy must not assert itself before the temporal powers.
Pope Francis, throughout his pontificate, has made this idea clear from minute one. Francis sees the Church as a field hospitalIn the middle of a battlefield, where, when you are badly wounded, you have to treat the wounds and not look at the glucose level. That is why he has continually surprised us with his direct and concrete gestures, such as phoning the parish priest of a Catholic church in Gaza.
Devotion to the Virgin
He is a Pope who has a great devotion to his mother the Virgin Mary. Once he met a family that educated their children with Christian values, but they forgot about Mary because they considered it a thing of the past, and he felt very sorry for them.
One manifestation of his love for Mary is that on the morning of fumata biancaCardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had gone to pray at Santa Maria la Maggiore, where there is a Byzantine icon: "Salus Populi Romani"which, according to tradition, was painted by St. Luke.
Most Popes are buried under St. Peter's Basilica; but Pope Francis has chosen to follow the example of Pope Leo XIII, who in 1903 was buried of his own free will in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. Also Pius IX, before him, had chosen a Basilica beyond the Tiber, san Lorenzo fuori le mura.
Francis will rest where he has gone to pray hundreds of times for his needs and where he went to pray the morning he was elected. It is, therefore, a sentimental choice.
Community living
Community life is essential for him, and for this reason he did not want to live in the Vatican, but in Santa Marta, together with his brothers and sisters in the faith. He is a "rocker" Pope, who likes to be in contact with other people.
The Holy Spirit blows as he wills and when he wills, and if previously we had a theologian Pope, who was happy with his cats and playing the organ in his free time, this Pope was (while health was with him) one of those who kicked in the streets and climbed in the subway to see the faces of the people.
A new style
He also wants that simplicity that characterizes him in his funeral and has arranged modifications in his funeral rite: he has simplified the funeral rites. On April 20, 2024, in the new Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis, which has been updated after twenty years. The Pope jokingly commented that the funeral rite needed a modification to simplify it and he himself will be the first to try it out. The novelties are concentrated in four aspects: the language, the main phases of the ceremony, the modification of texts and music of the prayers, the liturgical celebration following the death of the Pope.
Solemn titles will make room for simpler terms such as PastorThe death will take on a more spiritual tone. The confirmation of death will take place in his personal chapel, and the body will be exposed in a single coffin, eliminating the use of three different coffins.
Of all the contributions of this pastoral pope, I would like to highlight his preaching on the family. We all dream of a beautiful, perfect family. But perfection, Francis made it clear, does not exist.
The family
For Francis, the family is something sacred, a place of growth. The Pope advised to call your parents (if you have them). Homosexuals need understanding: "They are children of God and have the right to be in a family. You cannot throw anyone out of the family, nor make life impossible". For the Pope, every family has its problems and its great joys. In a family everyone is different from each other, each person is unique and differences can cause conflicts and painful wounds.
The medicine to heal these wounds is forgiveness, and with God's help we can gain the strength to do it from the heart. God forgives us too, it is we who do not allow God's forgiveness to flood us and heal us. God never tires of forgiving. That forgiveness frees us from resentment and brings peace. Some words pronounced by a Pope that disarm you, but the interesting thing about him is that what disarms is the heart.
A Pope for everyone, everyone
The Pope ironizes with his own death. "Someone is praying for the Pontiff to go to Paradise, but the master of the harvest intends to leave me still here," he joked with Meloni when he went to visit him on behalf of the Italian people on the tenth floor of the Gemelli Hospital.
There were flurries of conclave, although the Pope's life is in God's hands. Candles, Masses, prayers: the faithful seemed to be on tenterhooks, with the Pope admitted to the hospital.
Atheists, agnostics and people who profess other religions do not hide a certain shock for a Pontiff who has broken schemes and has reduced distances in a postmodern world.
A Pope who has reached everyone, everyone, everyone (reproducing the "everyone everyone everyone" that the Pope said to the young people in Lisbon).
