The friendship between Pope Francis and Geneviève Jeanningros, the French nun who ignored the protocol to pray before the Pontiff’s coffin

Geneviève-Josèphe Jeanningros. Until Wednesday, the name of this 82 -year -old French nun, was known for only a handful of people.

However, with his decision to remain motionless in front of Pope Francis’s coffin for a few minutes, that has changed.

The image of the small religious with her blue co -affection and a green backpack on the back, praying and crying before the coffin of the Argentine pontiff, while the cardinals passed by her side, she has moved the world.

The protocol arranged by the Vatican for the burning chapel of the Pope prohibits expressly stopping before his body, which is located at the foot of the main altar of the Basilica of San Pedro, and anyone who tries to skip the rule is provided by the security personnel to be fulfilled.

Why didn’t that happen to the religious? Because of the close friendship they both maintained, as it has begun to transcend.

The relationship, however, did not start well, according to Jeanningros herself and those who know her.

“She was upset, but very annoyed with Bergoglio and sent her a letter making him know,” Emily Stout, a Jeanningros companion in the congregation of the Little Sisters of Jesus, explained to BBC world, order to which the now recognized religious belongs.

The reason? “His performance in the case of the disappeared during the last military dictatorship in Argentina,” added the US nun from the headquarters of the general fraternity of the brotherhoods of Jesus, located a few steps from the historic abbey of Tre Fontane, where, according to tradition, the apostle Paul was beheaded in the year 67 DC

Jeanningros is the niece of the French religious Lèonie Duquet, who in December 1977 was arrested and disappeared by the Argentine military regime along with 12 other people, including another gala nun called Alice Domon. This, for its human rights activism.

The military authorities intended to simulate that the action was perpetrated by the guerrillas of the Montoneros, climbed the captives to an plane and threw them into the sea.

Duket’s body was not found and identified until 2005, when he was buried in the Church of the Santa Cruz de Buenos Aires, where his captors were taken. The gesture, however, did not satisfy his niece.

“The burial disliked me,” Jeanningros admitted in a video shared by his companions of order.

And then he said: “The Church was full to burst, but there was not a single representative of the bishopric (…) I couldn’t accept that. I didn’t want my aunt to be there.”

“In October 2005, Bergoglio (then Archbishop of Buenos Aires) came to Rome, for the Synod of the Bishops, and wrote him complaining and left my phone number. He called me and there I told myself: ‘What did you do?’” The religious continued.

“He told me: ‘Thank you, my sister, for sending me this letter, but I wanted to tell her that I am not oblivious to this situation and that I allowed them to be buried (the missing) around the church.’” He said.

But the religious was not satisfied and insisted on her claim.

“I replied: ‘That is not enough. You had to have been there (in the burial) for the people who suffered so much. The church had to be present and it was not’. Then a good time remained silent and replied: ‘Thank you, my sister, so we must speak between brothers and sisters,’” he said.

Eight years later, after the historic resignation of Benedict XVI, Bergoglio was chosen new head of the Catholic Church, something that scared the nun, confessed in the video.

However, just a month after her choice, the sister discovered that there was nothing to fear.

“On April 20, 2013, they invited us to a Mass in (the residence) Santa Marta (where the Argentine pontiff lived and died); after the Mass, the Pope welcomed us and kissed me,” said the religious old woman.

“How I would like a poor church, for the poor!” When Jeanningros listened to Bergoglio to pronounce these words, a few days after his choice, he concluded that he was the right man to sit on the throne of San Pedro.

“There I began to cry, because my aunt had died because of that, for the poor. And I said: finally something will change,” he recalled.

With the passage of time, the relationship between the late Pope and the religious did nothing more than narrow.

“She went to almost all Wednesday’s general audiences and worried about getting tickets like any person, although surely if she had called the Vatican they would have given them without any problem,” Stout explained.

The Pope also returned the visits to the religious. Thus, in 2015 already the end of 2024, he moved to Luna Park, the attraction park where the religious old woman lives with the Ferians, located in the town of Ostia, about 30 kilometers southwest of Rome.

The nun said that the pontiff was surprised by the simple way as she lived and in particular for seeing where the chapel had.

“I didn’t think they had the Blessed Sacrament in the tow,” said the missing pontiff, according to the sister’s story.

During the pandemic, the religious took advantage of her contacts with Bergoglio to request help, in the form of food and belongings for park workers and also a group of transsexuals living in the area.

However, from the congregation they clarified that the work of Jeanningros with this group began in recent years.

The media exposure of Jeanninggros has also put the foci on the congregation of which it is part: Hermanitas de Jesús, an order founded in 1939 by the French Magdeleine Hutin (1898-1989), better known as Magdalena de Jesús.

The religious order is different from others that exist within the Catholic Church. Because? “In its beginnings, it was a community dedicated exclusively to the nomads and Muslims,” ​​reads on its website.

Years later, “the Magdalena sister receives the certainty that fraternity is called to open to the entire world, retaining a special friendship with the believers of Islam,” the presentation continues.

“Our founder was inspired by Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), a French religious who in the nineteenth century goes to Sahara to live with Muslims, but without the intention of turning them, but wanted to teach them that their life was valuable,” said Sister Stout.

De Foucauld was canonized by Francisco in May 2022, almost 17 years after being beatified.

Stout said that the congregation does not have among its objectives to look for new souls.

“We want Muslims to live their own faith and their own religious tradition, because the Church believes that living faith with depth, whatever, is salvation,” he said.

“Our apostolate is one of friendship, we want to live what our neighbors live and share their destiny, not impose anything,” he added.

He also said they do not direct schools, hospitals, outpatients or old.

“We work side by side with people. We do cleaning work, in factories or in attraction parks such as sister Jeanningros, because we believe that this is the best way to be accessible and it is the best way to take the church to people who never go to it and who have even been injured by the Church,” he said.

Another striking element is that they live integrated in the areas of the 48 countries where they have a presence.

“We live in small communities, of three or four people, which we call fraternities, which means Brotherhood. We live in apartments or, like sister Jeanningros, in a trailer next to the park workers. She even has a position where she sells items,” the Clémence sister, also a member of the order, told BBC.

“We like low profile, because it gives us freedom and creativity,” said Stout, who added: “Power and influence are harmful to the Gospel and is a threat to its message.”

The religious attributed to this low profile the fact that Jeanningros has chosen to reject the invitation of BBC Mundo for a brief interview.

“Friendship has something very intimate and when you know and respect someone deeply, you don’t want to expose it,” he explained.

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