The Tomorrow of April 21, Monday of the eighth of Easter, celebrating the unstoppable joy for the resurrection of Christ, we received with some surprise and much weigh the news of the death of Pope Francis.
Francisco arrived in Rome from his native Argentina, at a crucial and unknown moment for the Church, which he had not lived – in the current times – the resignation of a pontiff. The Pope who, in very simple details, wanted to teach us to return to the essential and when he went to the balcony and ask the prayer of the Church with humility by his person and by the ministry that had been entrusted to him.
The Pope who insisted that we are in an evangelizing emergency and that today it is necessary to evangelize from joy, with missionary joy, involving us, “prioritizing”, celebrating and going out to meet everyone with the certainty that we carry a message that fills us with joy and that has the ability to transform the world and all social realities. He asked us to be Church in exit, in a state of permanent mission. And that we were a poor and the poor church, putting in the center the person redeemed by Christ and especially the migrants already needed.
The Pope of the family and the young people, who put his gaze in the situations that the families of all time live and always called to live the joy of love at home. He insisted, as much as he could, in the love grateful for the elders, in the care and attention of grandparents and respect for the wisdom that the years have given them. It has been the Pope who has dedicated a document to young people, showing them that Christ is always young and that He is the center of a lifetime, which renews our youth.
Francisco has been the Pope who has made a call full of impetus for the care of the common house, to be responsible for the care of the land that God has granted us, making serious commitments and welcoming his proposal for ecological conversion to build an integral ecology.
He reminded us that holiness is not in matters away from ordinary life, that there are saints even in “the door next door”, and that we are all called to live with emotion the great dream that God has with our lives.
Francisco reminded us that mercy is an antidote that can calm the evil in the world, that mercy allows us to look like Jesus, the face of Father’s mercy. It has been the Pope of La Paz, with many actions and emissaries who were always in the places shattered by the madness of the war, the Pope close to those who suffered in so many sites hit by the absurd violence that poisons the soul.
The Pope of Sinodality died, leaving us a horizon of reform in the ecclesial structures that becomes a challenge to continue developing. He died leaving us the joy of the jubilee year, so that we all grow as pilgrims of hope.
We fire Pope Francis. Our feeling is double, pain and gratitude. Pain for the farewell of a great man and a great pope, and gratitude for all that I have done this Buenos Aires coming from distant lands, by the Church and by the world. Rest in peace.
