The first thought is a great personal pain: because I knew it well and I estimated it. I met him as a bishop of Buenos Aires when wondering how the church should be present in a big city and especially in its suburbs. It was a great pope in a very particular way. Francesco has very sown in different directions also asking for the collaboration of the Church and his reception in the face of his intuitions and prophecies. There was not always this collaboration because it has been a contested Pope and some of his instances have fallen into silence. Today, however, everyone feels a great emptiness. Because Bergoglio is a man who said a lot in the world. And above all it is a personality that has represented good and peace in an undisputed way. And in this time of conflicts in a world that is divided and articulated and shatters it was a safe reference.
The language and signs of Francis. Does the ability to bring people closer to a world that moves away from the Christian message?
It was not an isolated evangelizer, Bergoglio was a man witnessed a communicated faith and a good humanity. The true manifesto of the pontificate of Francesco is the Evangelii Gaudium which must be rereaded because that church design is also a will. He would have dreamed of an outgoing church, capable of being among the men and women of our time. I think this has only been partially made for the laziness and resistances that have been there. But all this remains as a legacy of his great inheritance. Bergoglio was a truly missionary man in a new sense. An expert missionary of humanity.
Dialogue with the secular world and proximity to the distant
In this liquid time there is a world of believers and believers in his own way, of spiritual lay people. The lay/Catholic fences no longer exist. Francesco was far -sighted in considering a church of pure and hard. On the contrary, he wanted a Church as people with open and never closed boundaries, knowing how to grasp in each that glimmer of faith and above all of love that exists in each of us. I think this was Francesco: a deferator of walls that he knew how to live in our liquid time representing a rock of faith.
A historical judgment on the pontificate of Francesco. How will it be remembered in the future?
This is the Pope who made the Church of the poor. Also because often in the past the relationship with the poor has been delegated to assistance institutions. Francesco put the poor in the middle of the church, he spoke of touching the poor, as a fully human and spiritual experience. It was not a political pope; Yet his policy was that of fraternity and dialogue. I think of that wonderful document that is “brothers all” a program of gripped of peoples and religions. A true encyclical of peace. If we had read it and listened to the world, it would not be so at war. And then the great dialogue with religions. When he was elected the Christian world was in great difficulty with Islam and instead Francesco managed to build with the document on the fraternity between Christians and Muslims of Abu dai a huge platform. Then there were other fundamental moments with the Shiite world such as the meeting with Al Sistani and with the Imam of Al-Azhar. In a tiring and complicated time Francesco succeeded with Islam, he built extremely positive relationships. And I would not forget his trust in medicine and science with personal vaccination against Covid. At that time marked by the image that will remain forever of a pope, in the rain, in a square of St. Peter empty, in Easter 2020 in front of Jesus Crucifix.
