By Walter Sánchez Silva
May 4, 2025
02:59 p. m.
May. 4, 2025
02:59 p. m.
Mercedes Fariña, the Argentine painter who portrayed Pope Francis since she was chosen in 2013 and who could give her one of her paintings in the Vatican, recalls “La Paz that emanated from her paternal figure.”
“The best memory of Francisco is his closeness, his humility to relate to everyone equally and, above all, his ability to hold bridges of understanding. The peace emanating from his paternal figure, beyond his investiture,” Fariña said in statements to ACI press this Sunday, May 4.
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The plastic artist exposes a sample of nine of her large -format works in the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Cathedral Foundation of La Plata (Argentina), where you can also find documentation regarding Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first Argentine, American and Jesuit Pope of History.
On his paintings, which can be seen in the Museum of the Cathedral of La Plata, Fariña told ACI Prensa that “he painted him to Francisco since he understood that this was a transcendental historical moment, to be able to sublimate, through my technique, the message of his legacy; as the artists dedicated to sacred art have done for centuries.”
The painter, mother of a family and “neighbor” of the late Pope since he lives in Flores, the neighborhood where Francisco discovered his vocation in the Basilica of San José – where the faithful placed a reproduction of the painting that presented him – also highlighted the proximity of the late Pontiff.
“I think Francisco will be remembered, citing his words, like ‘a shepherd with a smell of sheep’. It seems to me that there falls the fundamental of his legacy: being close to people, in order to practice mercy, in the entire extent of its meaning.”
In 2013, Pope Francis sent a letter to the painter, in which he thanked him for painting him and where he encouraged her to pray and make the others pray for him.
More information about the show at the WhatsApp +54 2241 41 5840, to email: [email protected] or on the Mercedes Instagram Instagram
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.
